(PDF) (DOC) (JPG)February 15, 2001

(Mahwah) — Award-winning author Jamaica Kincaid, known for her New Yorker stories and such books as A Small Place and the National Book Award-nominated My Brother, will read from her work Tuesday, April 3 at 7:30 p.m. in the Sharp Theater at Ramapo College of New Jersey. Admission is free. Kincaid’s appearance is part of the Contemporary American Writers Series sponsored by the School of American and International Studies at Ramapo College.

Kinkaid’s first book, At the Bottom of the River, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and went on to win the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Her second book, Annie John, published in 1986, is the story of a young girl’s coming of age in the West Indies. Susan Kerney, writing in the New York Times Book Review, thought Annie John’s story so “touching and familiar it could be happening in Anchorage, so inevitable it could be happening to any of us, any time, any place. And that’s exactly the book’s strength, its wisdom, its truth.”

Jamaica Kincaid was born and educated in St. John’s, Antigua, in the West Indies, and she now lives with her husband and children in Vermont. Of her own literary origins, she has said, “It would seem a bit odd for someone like me coming from the place I come from, not to be interested in what you call richness of description.” Her third book, A Small Place, published in 1989, is an extended essay about the shameful legacy of Antigua’s colonial past written in language that rises above anger and her outrage. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, in a review of A Small Place, declared, “Ms. Kincaid writes with passion and conviction, and she also writes with a musical sense of language, a poet’s understanding of how politics and history, private and public events, overlap and blur.”

Kincaid’s most recent work, My Garden (1999), is described as “an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the gardners who tend them.” Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone and The Paris Review. She was a 1992 recipient of the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund’s annual writer’s award and the 1997 Anisfield Wolf Book Award, which was established 60 years ago to recognize books that illuminate the rich diversity of human cultures.

The Sharp Theater is located in the Angelica and Russ Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts.

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About Ramapo College

Ramapo College of New Jersey is the state’s premier public liberal arts college and is committed to academic excellence through interdisciplinary and experiential learning, and international and intercultural understanding. The comprehensive college is situated among the beautiful Ramapo Mountains, is within commuting distance to New York City, was named one of the 50 Most Beautiful College Campuses in America by CondeNast Traveler, and boasts the best on-campus housing in New Jersey per Niche.com. Established in 1969, Ramapo College offers bachelor’s degrees in the arts, business, data science, humanities, social sciences and the sciences, as well as in professional studies, which include business, education, nursing and social work. In addition, the College offers courses leading to teacher certification at the elementary and secondary levels, and offers graduate programs leading to master’s degrees in Accounting, Applied Mathematics, Business Administration, Contemporary Instructional Design, Computer Science, Creative Music Technology, Data Science, Educational Leadership, Nursing, Social Work and Special Education, as well as a Doctor of Nursing Practice.

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