Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of Here Comes the Sun, a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and Patsy, a  New York Times Editors’ Choice, Financial Times Critics Choice, Stonewall Book Awards honor book, and Today Show “Read with Jenna” book club selection. Patsy has been named best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews, NPR, the Washington Post, TIME, People, Apple Books, the Guardian, Good Housekeeping, BuzzFeed, ELLE, and O, The Oprah Magazine.

She is a Lambda Literary Award winner and a recipient of the National Foundation for the Arts grant. She was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award, the New York Times Public Library Young Lions Award, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and was long-listed for the Dublin Literary Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction.

Her work has appeared in the New York Times, ELLE, Electric Literature, Ebony, BuzzFeed, the Rumpus, Lenny Letter, Catapult, Red Rock Review, Kweli Literary Journal, Mosaic, Ebony, and the Feminist Wire.

Dennis-Benn holds an MFA degree in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Lambda, Hedgebrook, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Hurston/Wright, and Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She has previously taught in the writing programs at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, and City College. She is the founder of the Stuyvesant Writing Workshop.

She was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, and lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York.

selected bibliography

Here Comes the Sun (2016)

Patsy (2019)

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online resources

Nicole Dennis-Benn’s website
“‘We are so secretive’: How Dennis-Benn depicts working-class life,” the New York Times, May 31, 2019
“Patsy may be fiction, but its story of a black woman immigrant is searingly true,” TIME, May 21, 2019
‘“This Is No Paradise’: Author Explores The Side Of Jamaica Tourists Don’t See,” Interview with Dennis-Benn on All Things Considered, July 4, 2016

Video: Dennis-Benn at Ms. magazine