Jamaican · b. 1985
Safiya Sinclair is a Jamaican poet and memoirist. She was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and grew up in a strict Rastafarian household. She studied at the University of the West Indies, earned an MFA in poetry at the University of Virginia, and completed a PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California. Her first poetry collection, Cannibal (2016), won the Whiting Award and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was a finalist for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her memoir How to Say Babylon (2023) describes her childhood under her father's rules and her escape through poetry. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography and appeared on many best-of-the-year lists. She has taught creative writing at Arizona State University and the University of Michigan, and she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Her work gives a clear voice to Caribbean women and to life inside Rastafari.