Safiya Sinclair

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir How to Say Babylon, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the OCM Bocus Prize for Caribbean Literature. A Read with Jenna/Today Show Book Club pick, it was named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, TIME, The Atlantic, and Barack Obama, among others, Tara Westover, bestselling author of Educated called it, "Dazzling. Potent. Vital. A light shining on the path of self-deliverance.”

Sinclair's debut poetry collection, Cannibal, won a Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the OCM Boca Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry.

Sinclair received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Virginia, where she studied with Rita Dove, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. She is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

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