Join us to celebrate the publication of award-winning author Jamaica Kincaid’s latest book, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Coloured Children, and discover a garden unlike any other.

This alternative ‘Enclyopedia’ of natural knowledge charts a hidden history through a deceptively simple ‘alphabet’ and beautifully crafted illustrations drawn by one of America’s leading artists, Kara Walker. Woven together the book is a subversive and brilliantly realised work that reveals the often disturbing truths about what’s planted in our backyards and gardens.

Hosted by writer Hannah Hutchings-Georgiou, the two will consider the importance of the garden to Jamaica’s latest book as well as many of her renowned works: At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, A Small Place, My Garden (Book) and Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya. Offering us a metaphor for relationships and life, Jamaica will explore how the garden harbours the actual seeds and fruits of migration, colonialism, capitalism and globalisation.

Unearthing little known facts about ‘breadfruit’, ‘hibiscus’ and ‘musa’ (which is the proper name for the banana), Jamaica will debunk the myths around plants, trees, and the natural produce of both, as she rewrites the stories we tell ourselves about the world in which we live and have attempted to shape throughout time.

During this night with Jamaica you will learn that we come to know ourselves best, both individually and collectively, when we consider the state of the garden.

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Jamaica Kincaid is a writer who was born in St. John's Antigua. She has published a number of books, fiction and nonfiction. She is the recipient of the Hadada Award for Lifetime Achievement from The Paris Review, and has been awarded the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Clifton Fadiman Award and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship amongst others. She teaches in the English, African and African-American Studies departments at Harvard University and lives in Vermont where she enjoys her gardens.