Nicole Dennis-Benn

From the award-winning novelist Nicole Dennis-Benn, Patsy is the brave and stirring saga of a Jamaican woman who upends her life for a new start in America, leaving her young child behind. Fellow author Alexander Chee calls Patsy a “stunningly powerful intergenerational novel about the price – the ransom really – women must pay to choose themselves, their lives, their value, their humanity”. Nicole joins Santilla Chingaipe to discuss her portrait of a queer black woman grasping for self-determination. A passionate and fiercely urgent story, Patsy traces the silent threads of love that stretch across years and oceans. This recording is available on all major podcast platforms.

Nicole Dennis-Benn (International)

Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of the bestselling novel Patsy. Her debut novel Here Comes the Sun was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and was a finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Nicole is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Artist Grant and the 2018 Caribbean Life Impact Award. Her writing has been awarded a Richard and Julie Logsdon Fiction Prize, and two of her stories have been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize in Fiction.

Santilla Chingaipe (Australian)

Santilla Chingaipe is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker. Chingaipe’s latest documentary series, Third Culture Kids, is streaming on ABC iView. A regular contributor for The Saturday Paper, her first book of non-fiction is due later this year. Chingaipe is a member of the Federal Government’s Advisory Group on Australia-Africa Relations and lives in Melbourne.