World Literature: Jamaica Kincaid's 'Putting Myself Together' (Antigua) with Anderson Tepper

Jamaica Kincaid will be at Alphabet City on Tuesday, November 17, for a conversation about her essay collection Putting Myself Together. She'll be joined by moderator Anderson Tepper, and the whole thing runs from 7 to 8 PM.

If you're not familiar with her, Kincaid was born in St. John's, Antigua, and is now a prolific author and essayist living in Vermont. Putting Myself Together won the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and it pulls from nearly 50 years of her writing on gardening, friendship, and racism. It includes some of her earliest pieces from The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Ms., so it's a good way to see where she started. The collection ranges from "Jamaica Kincaid's New York," about her move from Antigua to the city at age 16, to the classic "Biography of a Dress."

Her other books include Annie John, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother, My Brother, Mr. Potter, and See Now Then, and she collaborated with Kara Walker on An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children. Her moderator, Anderson Tepper, is a guest curator of PEN America's World Voices Festival and a longstanding member of the Brooklyn Book Festival's Literary Council; he's formerly of Vanity Fair, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and World Literature Today. He also serves on City of Asylum's Advisory Board.

Tickets are free for both in-person and livestream options, so you can catch it at Alphabet City or from home. The event is from 7 to 8 PM on Tuesday, November 17.