Safiya Sinclair

Safiya Sinclair is the author of the memoir How to Say Babylon, winner of the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award and a Read with Jenna BookClub/Today Show pick.  It was named a A Best Book of 2023 by The Washington Post, The New Yorker, TIME, The Atlantic, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Harper’s Bazaar, Vulture, Town & Country, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, and Barack Obama. Tara Westover, bestselling author of Educated called it, "Dazzling. Potent. Vital. A light shining on the path of self-deliverance." How to Say Babylon is a shortlist finalist for the inaugural Women's Prize for Nonfiction, formerly the Orange Prize awarded for fiction.

Sinclair's debut poetry collection, Cannibal, won a Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the OCM Boca Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry.

Sinclair received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Virginia, where she studied with Rita Dove, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.  She is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.