The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival and the Center for Fiction and the welcome Whiting Award-winning poet and author Safiya Sinclair (Cannibal) for the launch of How to Say Babylon. In this cathartic and captivating memoir written in dazzling prose, Sinclair tells the story of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing in Jamaica, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, and her journey to find her own voice as a woman and poet. Sinclair is joined in conversation by Tara Westover, author of Educated—her memoir about leaving her survivalist Mormon family in order to go to college. The two authors will discuss Sinclair’s urgent and intimate memoir, reckoning with tradition, culture and family, and finding one’s voice. After the conversation, Sinclair will sign and personalize books.

Presented in partnership with the Center for Fiction.

Safiya Sinclair

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award in Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Cannibal was selected as one of the American Library Association’s Notable Books of the Year, was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Seamus Heaney First Book Award in the UK, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Tara Westover

Tara Westover is an American historian and memoirist. Her first book, Educated, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list, in hardcover, for more than two years. The book, a memoir of her upbringing in rural Idaho, was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the L.A. Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. To date, it has been translated into more than 45 languages. The New York Times named Educated one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, and the American Booksellers Association voted Educated the Nonfiction Book of the Year. For her staggering impact, Time magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2019. Westover holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 2019 she was the Rosenthal Writer in Residence at Harvard University. In 2023, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden.