Jamaica Kincaid
February 26–27, 2024
Bio
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, and gardener from St. John’s Antigua.
She now lives in Vermont and works as a Professor of African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University. In 1965
she left Antigua for New York to work as an au pair, then studied photography at the New York School for Social Research
and attended Franconia College in New Hampshire. She published her first collection of short stories At the Bottom of
the River, in 1983. Her autobiographical novels with an emphasis on mother-daughter relationships, Annie John (1984)
and Lucy (1990) followed shortly after. Her consideration of family relationships, Antigua, and colonialism reached
its fiercest in The Autobiography of My Mother (1996) and My Brother (1997). Her numerous awards include the Guggenheim
Award for Fiction and the 1999 Lannan Literacy Award for Fiction. She was also a Kelly Writers House Fellow in 2007.