Tiphanie Yanique  reads from the opening of her novel, Land of Love and Drowning (Riverhead/Penguin, 2014) at the 2014 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Tiphanie Yanique is the author of the short story collection, How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Graywolf, 2010), the picture book I Am the Virgin Islands (Little Bell Caribbean, 2012), and the novel Land of Love and Drowning (Riverhead/Penguin, 2014). Most recently, her novel Land of Love and Drowning won the First Novel Prize from the Center of Fiction. Previously, her writing has won the 2011 BOCAS Prize for Caribbean Fiction, Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, and an Academy of American Poet’s Prize. She has been listed by the Boston Globe as one of the sixteen cultural figures to watch out for and by the National Book Foundation as one of the 5 Under 35. Her writing has been published in Best African American Fiction, the Wall Street Journal, and American Short Fiction. Yanique is also the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship.

Yanique grew in the Hospital Ground/Round da Field neighborhood of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. She graduated from All Saints Cathedral School and the Rising Stars Youth Steel Orchestra program. Both her mother and grandmother were librarians in the Virgin Islands. Yanique is now an assistant professor in the MFA and Riggio Honors programs at the New School in New York City. She, her husband, son, and daughter split their time between Brooklyn and St. Thomas.

All Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference readings are available for free on iTunesU. Want to hear more? Visit the the Bread Loaf website.