Discipline: Literature – fiction

Nicole Dennis-Benn

Discipline: Literature – fiction
Region: Brooklyn, NY
MacDowell Fellowships: 2015

Nicole Dennis-Benn is the author of the highly acclaimed debut novel, Here Comes the Sun (Norton/Liveright, July 2016), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, which has received a starred Kirkus Review and is deemed one of the best books to read this summer and beyond by The New York Times, NPR, BBC, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, Bookish, Miami Herald, Elle, O Magazine, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Flavorwire, After Ellen, BookPage, Cosmopolitan, Brooklyn Magazine, among others. The New York Times book reviewer Jennifer Senior describes Here Comes the Sun as a “lithe, artfully-plotted debut”; Pulitzer Prize finalist, Laila Lalami, as well as Booklist have deemed it a "fantastic debut"; and Man Booker Prize winner Marlon James says, “[Here Comes the Sun] is a story waiting to be told”. Dennis-Benn has also been recently nominated for the 2016 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, ELLE Magazine, Electric Literature, Lenny Letter, Catapult, Kweli Journal, and others. Nicole Dennis-Benn has an M.F.A. in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Lambda, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Hurston/Wright, and Sewanee Writers' Conference. Dennis-Benn was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. She lives with her wife in Brooklyn, New York.

Studios

Monday Music

Nicole Dennis-Benn worked in the Monday Music studio.

Given to the residency by the Monday Music Club of Orange, NJ, Monday Music Studio is sited next to an enormous boulder deposited by glaciers thousands of years ago. A small dormer once pierced the east slope of the roof, but after damage suffered in the 1938 hurricane, the roof was rebuilt without the dormer. The interior…

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