Townsend, Jacinda

Winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka and James Fenimore Cooper prizes for Saint Monkey, Townsend provides many perspectives on motherhood while addressing potent issues of kidnapping, slavery, rape, abuse, and neglect, and vividly depicting their consequences. Highly recommended.

Townsend's descriptive prose, dense with imagery, portrays life in the Jim Crow South and Harlem's heyday with startling immediacy. This author is one to watch.