[Yale-readings] Fwd: TODAY: JAMAICA KINCAID @ 4:30pm

[nancy.kuhl at yale.edu]

JAMAICA KINCAID

Thursday, February 16, 2006
4:30 pm
Sterling Memorial Library


Critically acclaimed author Jamaica Kincaid will read selections from her
latest book Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya in the Sterling Memorial
Library Lecture Hall on Thursday February 16th at 4:30pm.

Jamaica Kincaid was born as Elaine Potter Richardson in Antigua on May 25th,
1949. At the age of seventeen, she left the island and her family to embark
on a new life in the United States. She worked first in Westchester, New
York as an au pair for an upper class family.  She then proceeded to study
photography at the New School for Social Research and also spent a year at
Franconia College in New Hampshire. She changed her name in 1973 to Jamaica
Kincaid, following her family¹s disapproval of her writing.
Her first writing experience was a series of articles and stories for
Ingenue magazine including her first published short story, Girl which
became part of the collection At the Bottom of the River published in 1983.
Her first novel, Annie John, followed in 1985.  It was through connections
at Ingenue magazine that she became acquainted with William Shawn, Editor of
the New Yorker magazine.  He offered her a job and for almost twenty years,
she was a regular contributor to the New Yorker magazine, writing articles
for the Talk of the Town section that were published in 2001 as Talk
Stories.  Among her essays, novels and memoirs are A Small Place (1988),
Lucy (1990), The Autobiography of My Mother (1996), My Brother (1997), My
Garden (Book) (1999) and Mr. Potter (2002).  Her most recent book is Among
Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya, which recounts her seed collecting
expedition in Asia. After more than three decades of writing, she continues
to be one of the most original and eloquent voices in American literature.
She divides her time between Vermont, where she shares a home with her
husband, the composer Allen Shawn and their two children, and Boston, where
she teaches at Harvard University¹s English Department.

A reception will immediately follow the talk in the Library¹s Memorabilia
Room, adjacent to the Lecture Hall.

Both the reading and the reception are free and open to the public.

The event is generously sponsored by several campus groups, including
African American Studies, the Afro-American Cultural Center, Agrarian
Studies, American Studies, Calhoun College Master¹s Office, Council on Latin
American and Iberian Studies, James Weldon Johnson Collection of the
Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library, English, Sterling Memorial
Library, Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity, Women's, Gender, &
Sexuality Studies, and the Whitney Humanities Center¹s Working Group on
Nationalisms and Empires.

contact: emmanuel.raymundo at yale.edu



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