Nicole Dennis-Benn

Nicole Dennis-Benn (born c. 1982) is a Jamaican novelist. She is known for her 2016 debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, which was named "Best Book of the Year" by The New York Times, and for her best-selling novel, Patsy, acclaimed by Time, NPR, People Magazine, and Oprah Magazine. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is an out lesbian and feminist author who explores themes of gender, sexuality, Jamaican life, and its diaspora in her works. Her voice has been described as bold and provocative with an urgency to tell the stories she'd always wanted to read as a young girl growing up in Jamaica. Her books have remained as must-reads on various major lists since publication and have been translated into multiple languages, including German, Italian, French, and Portuguese. Her 3rd and 4th novels were acquired by Random House in auction.

Life

Nicole Dennis-Benn was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. Her family lived in Vineyard Town, where she spent most of her childhood before moving to Portmore, St. Catherine. When she was 11 years old, Dennis-Benn won an academic scholarship to the prestigious St Andrew High School for Girls in Kingston.

She left Jamaica at 17. In America, she went on to attend college, receiving a bachelor's degree in Biology and Nutritional Sciences from Cornell University. She wrote throughout her college years to cope with her homesickness and found that she enjoyed writing more than her pre-med courses. After graduation, she pursued a master's degree in Public Health, specializing in women's reproductive health, at the University of Michigan's top ranking MPH program in Ann Arbor. Dennis-Benn then went on to work as a Project Manager in Gender, Sexuality and Health Research in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health for four years before finally deciding to pursue her passion as a writer.

While working at Columbia, she received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative writing, Fiction, from Sarah Lawrence College.

Marriage

Nicole married her wife, Dr. Emma Benn, in May 2012 in Jamaica. Their wedding became a viral sensation on the island, making national news because “the media [had] played it out as the first lesbian wedding” on the island. Despite fears about their high visibility as "out" lesbians, their desire to have an outdoor ceremony, and the history of attacks on same-sex couples on the island, they were able to find a safe venue. Dennis-Benn describes parts of Jamaica as safer for same-sex couples and has committed and engaged LGBTQ friends on the island. She and her wife were married the same year that same-sex marriage became legal in New York in 2012 where they had their initial wedding ceremony. In Jamaica, friends and family joined to celebrate, with many curious and excited hotel staffers, all taking pictures of the ceremony.

Awards and writing recognitions

In 2016, Dennis-Benn published her much acclaimed debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, with W.W. Norton/Liveright, becoming a writer to watch according to Publishers Weekly. She followed the success of her debut novel with the highly-acclaimed PATSY, which became a Read with Jenna Today Show Book-club pick. Nicole Dennis-Benn is a two time Lambda Literary Award winner for her novels, Here Comes the Sun and PATSY. Dennis-Benn is a recipient of the National Foundation for the Arts Grant. She was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize; long-listed for the Pen/Faulkner Award in Fiction and short-listed for the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her novels have appeared on several must-read and best-of-book lists.

She has written for Vogue, The New York Times, ELLE Magazine, Catapult, Red Rock Review, Kweli Literary Journal, Ebony, and the Feminist Wire.

Writing

Nicole Dennis-Benn's work challenges issues of “homophobia,...sexualization of young girls, race, class, [and] socioeconomic disparities” In 2010, while bringing her partner to visit Jamaica, she was confronted again by all of these issues, and her own identity. This solidified her decision to become a writer rather than continue her medical career. Her writing is often described in literary reviews as "harsh," "striking," and "engaging." Her tone does what she intends in order to expose the controversial underside of Jamaica's flashy tourism. Dennis-Benn hopes that Jamaicans can see and hear themselves in her stories. Above all, she hopes to show that Jamaica is more than a tourist destination, depicting the reality and daily lives of the people. Dennis-Benn describes her work as "love letters" to her homeland. The dialogue in her stories and novels is written in the patois dialect. Jennifer Senior describes it as "one of the book's [Here Comes the Sun's] incidental pleasures, its own melodious tune." It gives insight into Jamaican culture and Dennis-Benn's "internal speech."

Novels

Here Comes the Sun

Her debut novel, Here Comes the Sun, garnered positive critical attention and praise as it explores many of Jamaica's controversial issues. Dennis-Benn hopes her novel will get “people talking and thinking,” as she explores the "themes of love, identity, sexuality, and belonging" that all readers may be able to connect to.

The novel seeks to show the racial, social, and economic disparities that are often covered up by the Jamaican government's emphasis on unity. Poor and working-class Jamaicans are exploited “by the tourism industry to repay our [national] debt.” Naive Thandi, hotel worker Margot, her much older sister, and tourist-trapping Dolores, their mother, show, in three generations, the struggle that average Jamaicans face while trying daily to survive and find opportunities for success. According to Jennifer Senior, the novel shows “the ugliest legacy of colonialism,” the “self-hatred, passed down from one generation to the next” as Thandi tries to lighten her skin and her sister and mother remain caught up in the sex and tourism trades.