Award-winning author to speak at SHU

SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Seton Hall University’s Africana Studies program in the College of Arts and Sciences will host award-winning author Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of the debut novel “Here Comes the Sun,” on Wednesday, April 11, at 6 p.m. in the Beck Rooms in the Walsh Library.

The University’s Africana Studies program was established in 1970 and is the oldest of its kind in New Jersey. Every year, the program hosts notable speakers and lecturers as a part of its Africana Speaker-Lecture Series with funding from the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Lecture Series Fund.

“I established the Africana Speaker-Lecture Series in 2007 in order to provide students with the opportunity to listen to and interact with distinguished speakers such as Maryse Conde, Jamaica Kincaid, Elizabeth Nunez and Caryl Phillips,” said Simone Alexander, professor of English and director of the Africana Studies program. “I am proud that this series continues to thrive and that the program is continually able to attract high-caliber speakers to the university.”

“Here Comes the Sun” has received much acclaim including a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, an NPR Best Book of 2016, an Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, and a BuzzFeed, O Magazine, BBC, Entertainment Weekly and Book Riot Best Debut Fiction of 2016.

Dennis-Benn was named a finalist for the Princeton Arts Fellowship, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award and The New York Public Library Young Lions Award. She has also been the recipient of several other awards and fellowships including a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a Lambda Literary Award winner and a finalist for the 2016 John Leonard Prize National Book Critics Circle Award, the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, Dublin Literary Award and the 2017 Young Lions Fiction Award.

Her work has appeared in the New York Times, ELLE Magazine, Electric Literature, Lenny Letter, Catapult, Red Rock Review, Kweli Literary Journal, Mosaic, Ebony and The Feminist Wire. Her writing has been awarded a Richard and Julie Logsdon Fiction Prize and two of her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, Dennis-Benn is a graduate of St. Andrew High School for Girls and Cornell University. She holds a Master of Public Health from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a Kowald Visiting Faculty in City College’s MFA Program and Faculty in the Creative Writing Program at New York University.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

  Seton Hall University