Professor Kincaid Awarded
Fadiman Medal for Her
1985 Novel, Annie John

Jamaica Kincaid, the Josephine Olps Weeks Chair and professor of literature at CMC, has been chosen by The Center for Fiction in New York City to receive the 2010 Clifton Fadiman Medal for her 1985 novel, Annie John, a book Los Angeles Times reviewer Elaine Kendall characterized as so "neon-bright that the traditional story of a young girl's passage into adolescence takes on a shimmering strangeness."
The Fadiman Medal is awarded annually by a distinguished writer to a living American author in recognition of a work of fiction published more than 10 years previously, and one that the Center believes deserves renewed notice and a re-introduction to a new generation of readers.
Jane Smiley, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Thousand Acres, selected Kincaid on behalf of the Center for the honor that will occur at an event in New York City on Wednesday, April 14. In addition to the medal, Kincaid will receive an honorarium of $5,000. Smiley will be on hand to present the Fadiman Medal and speak about how much Annie John has meant to her.
For her part, Kincaid says she admires Smiley's writing a great deal and puts her on a list of favorite authors along with Ian Frazier (with whom she shared an Athenaeum visit in early March), Pat Barker, Jean Stafford, Jean Rhys, Grace Paley, John McPhee, May Sinclair, Apollodorus, Grace Dane Mazur and Jonathan Lethem.
Right now, Kincaid says her biggest challenge is finding the time to write while teaching literature to eager young CMC students.
"I think Jane chose Annie John because it's a moving depiction of a young Caribbean girl's life that has resonance for young girls everywhere," says Noreen Tomassi, The Center for Fiction's director. "It's really an adult novel that's also for young readers and it has a wide readership among high schools. We'd love to see the novel gain an even bigger audience via a larger curriculum."
Kincaid's novel focuses on a universal, tragic, and often comic theme: the loss of childhood. Annie's voiceurgent, demanding to be heardis one that will not soon be forgotten by readers.
"So touching and familiar it could be happening to any of us . . . and that's exactly the book's strength, its wisdom, its truth," wrote a critic for The New York Times Book Review.
Previous Fadiman Medal recipients include Elizabeth Hardwick for her novel Sleepless Nights, Shirley Hazzard for The Transit of Venus, Alexander Theroux for Darconville's Cat, Joan Didion for A Book of Common Prayer, James Purdy for Eustace Chisholm and the Works, Robert Coover for Pricksongs and Descants, and Lore Segal for Other People's Houses.