Jamaica Kincaid, winner of the 1997 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award®, and the internationally acclaimed author of Annie John, My Garden (Book), Lucy, and The Autobiography of My Mother, will present a lecture on her career and the art and craft of writing.

Ms. Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in St. Johns, Antigua. In 1967, when she was barely seventeen, her family sent her to Westchester, New York, to work as an au pair. A resourceful young woman, she was soon taking classes in photography at the New School for Social Research and began doing magazine work. In 1973, she took the name “Jamaica Kincaid,” in part because her family disapproved of her writing. By 1974 she was a regular for the New Yorker, penning more than 80 Talk of the Town pieces over the next decade, as well as other stories and articles.

Her early short stories were collected in her first book, At the Bottom of the River (1983), which was followed by her first novel, Annie John, in 1985. Her widely praised book, The Autobiography of My Mother, won the 1997 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award® for Fiction.

Much of her fiction is autobiographical and explores such themes as sense of place, the colonial past and post-colonial present and tragic familial relationships. Her harrowing memoir, My Brother (1997) recounts the death of her brother, Devon, from AIDS. Ms. Kincaid’s books on gardening include a 1999 collection of essays, My Garden (Book), My Favorite Plant: Writers and Gardeners on the Plants They Love (1998), and Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya (2005).

Jamaica Kincaid has been a visiting professor and teacher of creative writing at Harvard University and is currently Professor of Literature at Claremont-McKenna College in Claremont, California.

This event is co-sponsored by the Cleveland Public Library and is part of the Baker-Nord Center/Cleveland Foundation lecture series in partnership with Anisfield-Wolf.

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