Kincaid, Jamaica (1949-…), is the pen name of Elaine Potter Richardson, a Caribbean writer known for her novels and stories about life on the Caribbean island of Antigua, where she was born. Kincaid’s fiction also deals with the complexities of racism, cultural clashes, what it means to grow up female in the Caribbean, and the search for identity. She has been praised for her poetic use of language.
Kincaid’s writings include the autobiographical novels Annie John (1985) and Lucy (1990). The Autobiography of My Mother (1995), set in the West Indies, is a novel about the difficult life of a woman who is the book’s narrator. Mr. Potter (2002) is the fictional biography of an Antigua man as told by one of his illegitimate daughters. See Now Then (2013) explores the lives of a family—the mother, father, and their two children—in a village in New England. At The Bottom of the River (1983) is a collection of poetic and dreamlike narratives. The book made Kincaid an immediate literary celebrity. A Small Place (1988) is an essay about Antigua.
Kincaid was born on May 25, 1949, in St. John’s, Antigua (now part of Antigua and Barbuda). She moved to New York City at the age of 17 to work. She was a staff writer on the New Yorker magazine from 1976 to 1995. Her first published work was the short story “Girl” (1978). A collection of her early short stories was published as Talk Stories (2001). Kincaid selected her pen name after she became a professional writer.
