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Writing career

Kincaid's short fiction has appeared in The Paris Review and The New Yorker, where her novel Lucy was originally serialized.^[4] Her first book, At the Bottom of the River (1983), was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.^[5] Awards she has received include the Center for Fiction's Clifton Fadiman Medal, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Prix Femina Étranger, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award.^[6]

Her novels are loosely autobiographical, though Kincaid has warned against interpreting their autobiographical elements too literally: "Everything I say is true, and everything I say is not true. You couldn't admit any of it to a court of law. It would not be good evidence."^[7] Her work often prioritizes "impressions and feelings over plot development"^[8] and often features conflict with both a strong maternal figure and colonial and neocolonial influences.^[9] Excerpts from her non-fiction book A Small Place^[10] were used as part of the narrative for Stephanie Black's^[11] 2001 documentary, Life and Debt.^[12]