Rita Dove taught Safiya Sinclair that “it’s OK to say a thing plainly.”

Babylon was everything forbidden, and looming all around us—and my father tried to protect us from it at all costs.

LFLA joins the nationwide celebration of 250 years of African American poetry...

Sinclair grew up in a devout Rasta family in Jamaica where women were subservient. When she cut her dreadlocks at age 19, she became "a ghost" to her father. Her new memoir is How to Say Babylon.

The poet began life in a hidden village by the sea. But then her father became stricter and more suspicious of the corrupting influence of ‘Babylon’ …

Sinclair explores her repressive childhood under a strict Rastafarian father and how she broke away.

The fiction, nonfiction, and poetry books that entertained and enlightened us.

Dreadnought, I. Dread from the sea

The author speaks with fellow Jamaican writer Nicole Dennis-Benn about her new work. "In Jamaica," Sinclair says, "we have this idea of 'Keep your family secrets to yourself' and also 'Keep your...

A courageous memoir of breaking free from a father’s oppression – and how poetry can be a salve against chaos

Safiya Sinclair joins Kevin Young to read and discuss Natalie Diaz’s poem “From the Desire Field” and her own “Gospel of the Misunderstood.”

From "Doppelganger" to "King," these are the most impactful nonfiction books published this year.

For this installment of his series of interviews with contemporary poets, Peter Mishler corresponded with Safiya Sinclair. Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of…

Safiya Sinclair was raised to be Rastafari; instead, she became a poet. Why it took her more than a decade to write the lyrical memoir 'How to Say Babylon'

The Jamaican poet on her new memoir chronicling life with an authoritarian father, reconfiguring the postcard image of her homeland and her love of Marvel comic books

What does it mean to live in a nation determined to erase you? Or to be defined by the silence of such erasure? From a young age, I learned quickly, and intimately, all the ways one person could th…

Say goodbye to your beach reads and hello to a new batch of books that will get you excited for the change of seasons

As a girl I held the hind

Ten authors whose original ideas challenged our preconceived notions of the world.

Fresh Air's book critic says 2023 was an outstanding year for reading. Corrigan shares 10 of her favorite titles – a wide-ranging list of fiction and nonfiction.

As the Israeli government cuts 2.3 million Palestinians living under siege off from food, water, fuel, and electricity, it also continues dropping bombs across one of the most densely populated areas...

Bernardine Evaristo will discuss her award-winning novel "Girl, Woman, Other" and feminism and race in a conversation with poet Safiya Sinclair.

I think the responsibility of the writer is to say something true, to give voice to untold histories, to say something sincere about personhood, to speak from the margins…

Sister, there was nothing left for us. / Down here, this cast-off hour, we listened / but heard no voices in the shells. No beauty. // Our lives already tangled in the violence of our hair, / we le…

Books that will transport you from the beach to a road trip with messy friends or a Round Table with Arthur’s knights.