Safiya Sinclair

Safiya Sinclair (born 1984, Montego Bay, Jamaica)[1] is a Jamaican poet and memoirist. Her debut poetry collection, Cannibal, won several awards, including a Whiting Award for poetry in 2016 and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for poetry in 2017. She is currently an associate professor of creative writing at Arizona State University.[2]

Safiya Sinclair
Born1984 (age 38–39)
Montego Bay, Jamaica
EducationBennington College; University of Virginia; University of Southern California
Occupation(s)Poet and memoirist
Notable workCannibal (2016); How To Say Babylon (2023)
AwardsPrairie Schooner Book Prize; Whiting Award; OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
Websitewww.safiyasinclair.com

Early life and education

Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the oldest of four children, with two sisters and one brother.[3] She has described her father, a reggae musician, as a "militant Rasta man". It is because of what Sinclair refers to as the "alienating" experience of Rastafari culture that she turned to poetry.[4] At 16, her first poem was published in the Jamaican Observer.[3][5]

Sinclair moved to the United States in 2006 to attend college, first earning her BA degree from Bennington College in Vermont. She went on to obtain an MFA in Poetry from the University of Virginia, where she studied with Rita Dove,[6] and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.[7]

Career

Sinclair's poems have been published in various journals, including Poetry, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and Granta[8][9][10][11] She wrote Catacombs, a chapbook of poems and essays, during a one-year return to Jamaica following her graduation from Bennington.[5] It was released by Argos Books in 2011. In September 2016, she released her debut collection of poems, Cannibal, through University of Nebraska Press. In 2019, Picador purchased UK and Commonwealth rights to Cannibal, How to Say Babylon: A Memoir, and a third, to-be-announced book.[12] Cannibal was released in the UK in October 2020.

Cannibal

Sinclair's Cannibal opens with lines spoken by Caliban, an indigenous man enslaved by Prospero in William Shakespeare's play, The Tempest. In an essay for Poetry, Sinclair explains that she first read The Tempest as a teenager in Jamaica, and at that time identified with Miranda, daughter of the oppressive Prospero.[3] In subsequent readings, after Sinclair moved to the United States, she began to liken her experience of exile to that of Caliban's.[13]

Drawing connections between Caribbean experiences in the present day and that of Caliban's is something postcolonial theorists and poets have done before Sinclair (hence her secondary epigraph from poet Kamau Brathwaite). In Cannibal, Sinclair charts her personal experience of exile from her strict upbringing in Jamaica through her immigration to the United States. Hers is an "exile at home, exile of being in America, exile of the female body, and the exile of the English language." She chose the title Cannibal after recognizing this thread through her poems. As she explains: "The very name Caliban is a Shakespearean anagram of the word cannibal, the English variant of the Spanish word canibal, which originated from caribal, a reference to the native Carib people in the West Indies..."[3][13]

Other work

Sinclair's debut memoir, How to Say Babylon, was published by Simon & Schuster in the US in October 2023.[14] According to the review aggregator Book Marks, the memoir received "rave" reviews from critics.[15] Reviewing it in The New York Times, Quiara Alegría Hudes wrote: "For its sheer lusciousness of prose, the book's a banquet."[16] It was selected as a Read With Jenna book club pick.[17]

In addition to writing, Sinclair is also a university-level educator. Prior to joining the English department at Arizona State University, she was a postdoctoral research associate in the Literary Arts Department at Brown University.[18]

Bibliography
  • Catacombs, Argos Books (2011), ISBN 978-0981743592
  • Cannibal, University of Nebraska Press (2016), ISBN 978-0803290631
  • How to Say Babylon: A Memoir, Simon & Schuster (2023), ISBN 978-1982132330

Awards and nominations

Nominations

References
  1. "Safiya Sinclair". www.poetryinternational.com (in Dutch). Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  2. "Pulitzer Prize winner Mitchell S. Jackson and Whiting Award winner Safiya Sinclair join ASU's Department of English". ASU News. 21 June 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  3. Sinclair, Safiya (15 June 2023). "'Gabble Like a Thing Most Brutish'". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  4. Sanderson, Caroline (24 July 2020). "Safiya Sinclair | 'There wasn't much space for me as a woman to grow and thrive'". The Bookseller. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  5. Linan, Steve (6 April 2016). "Graduate student receives affirmation of her talent — a prestigious award for poetry". USC News. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  6. Cole, Jess (20 April 2023). "Two Poets Who Debated Every Syllable". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  7. "Safiya Sinclair — ABOUT". Safiya Sinclair. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  8. "Safiya Sinclair". Poetry Foundation. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  9. "Safiya Sinclair | Kenyon Review Author". The Kenyon Review. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  10. Sinclair, Safiya (25 June 2018). ""Gospel of the Misunderstood"". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  11. Sinclair, Safiya (8 February 2017). "Hymen Elegy". Granta. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  12. Chandler, Mark (1 March 2019). "Picador wins seven-way auction for Jamaican poet Sinclair's memoir". The Bookseller. Retrieved 16 June 2023.
  13. Contreras, Ingrid Rojas (9 April 2017). "Safiya Sinclair Reclaims the Monstrous in 'Cannibal'". KQED. Retrieved 18 June 2023.
  14. "How to Say Babylon: A Memoir". Simon & Schuster.
  15. "Book Marks reviews of How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair". Book Marks. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
  16. Hudes, Quiara Alegría (29 September 2023). "How a Strict Rastafarian Childhood Gave Way to Poetic Freedom". The New York Times.
  17. "Jenna Bush Hager says her October 2023 pick is an 'incredible' memoir". TODAY.com. 28 September 2023. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
  18. "Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellows 2019-2021 | Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity (OIED) | Brown University". www.brown.edu. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  19. "Cannibal". Prairie Schooner. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  20. "Safiya Sinclair". www.whiting.org. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  21. "Awards – American Academy of Arts and Letters". artsandletters.org. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  22. "OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature • Bocas Lit Fest". Bocas Lit Fest. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  23. "The Phillis Wheatley Book Awards". AALBC.com, the African American Literature Book Club. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  24. Tubb, Nathaniel (17 January 2017). "2017 PEN OPEN BOOK AWARD". PEN America. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  25. "2017 LITERARY AWARDS FINALISTS | PEN Center USA". 23 December 2017. Archived from the original on 23 December 2017. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
  26. "2017 Longlist - Swansea University". Swansea University. Retrieved 14 June 2023.
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