Authors 2008

Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid was born Elaine Potter Richardson in 1949 in Antigua, West Indies. At 16 she left her home to live in New York where she worked for a family as an au pair. Her first writing experience involved a series of articles for Ingenue magazine and the New Yorker. In 1973 she changed her name as her family disapproved of her writing: this complex relationship between ones origins and an acquired identity is one of the main central themes in her novels, some of them being The Autobiography of My Mother, My Brother, Mr.Potter (published in Italian by Adelphi). She currently teaches creative writing at Bennington College and Harvard University.

Franca Cavagnoli

Writer and translator, teaches translation at the Higher Institute for Interpreters and Translators of Milan and l’Università degli Studi di Milano. She is the author of two novels, Una pioggia bruciante and Non si è seri a 17 anni, both published by Frassinelli. Since 1987 she has been consistently translating for Adelphi, Einaudi, Feltrinelli, Mondadori and Frassinelli. She is the curator of the complete works of Toni Morrison and has translated various works by Jamaica Kincaid, Nadine Gordimer, J.M. Cotzee, V.S. Naipaul, William Burroughs and David Malouf.