born in 1949 as Elaine Potter Richardson in the Caribbean, is an Antiguan-American author. At the age of 17, after her mother remarried and had to support three half-brothers, she moved to New York as an au pair. There, she soon became the writer Jamaica Kincaid. Her first story, \u00bbGirl\u00ab \u2013 a single-sentence piece published in The New Yorker \u2013 catapulted her to fame. Many of her award-winning short stories and novels explore Kincaid\u2019s unique position as a daughter, a woman, a Black person, and a citizen of a former colony on the margins of the world. In addition to her weighty themes, Kincaid is renowned for her distinctive voice and her highly autobiographical approach to writing \u2013 developed long before the memoir trend took hold. Jamaica Kincaid converted to Judaism. She teaches African and African American Studies at Harvard and lives in Vermont, where, when she\u2019s not writing, she indulges in her second passion: gardening. In 2004, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In fall 2025, she will be a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. <\/p>\n\n
Last Update: 2025<\/p>\n\n
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