The Africana Studies program hosts author, Nicole Dennis-Benn on April 11 at 6 p.m. in Beck ABC. 

Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of the debut novel, Here Comes the Sun (Norton/Liveright, July 2016) that has received much acclaim including a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, an NPR Best Book of 2016, an Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, a BuzzFeed, O Magazine, BBC, Entertainment Weekly, Book Riot and others as 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. 

Dennis-Benn is the recipient of several awards and fellowships that include 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; and 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 NYU.

The lecture is free and open to the public. All are welcome.