The book chronicles three generations of a single-family living through the territory's modern history, from Danish to American control. Tiphanie Yanique, the writer, hails from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. Yanique is a Caribbean American fiction writer, poet, and essayist who lives in New York. In 2010 the National Book Foundation named her a "5 Under 35" honoree. She also teaches creative writing, currently based at Emory University. Yanique won the 2014 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize (formerly the Flaherty-Dunnan Center for Fiction Prize) for her debut novel Land of Love and Drowning,[and the monthly book review publication BookPage listed her as one of the "14 Women to Watch Out for in 2014". The publication “Land of Love and Drowning” also won the Phillis Wheatley Award for Pan-African Literature, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, and was listed by NPR as one of the Best Books of 2014, as well as being a finalist for the Orion Award in Environmental Literature and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award.
Listen to Interview here:
https://www.npr.org/2014/07/27/335020807/love-and-drowning-in-the-u-s-virgin-islands
