The Radical Power of Gardening

Jamaica Kincaid is a writer, novelist, and professor. Since publishing her debut story collection At the Bottom of the River in 1983, Kincaid has written five acclaimed novels, including Annie John, Lucy and most recently An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children. Her non-fiction includes My Brother, a chronicle of her brother’s battle with AIDS, as well as A Small Place and Among Flowers, and the collection. My Garden (Book) has received a Guggenheim Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, the Prix Femina Étranger, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Clifton Fadiman Medal, and, in 2017, the Dan David Prize for Literature. In April 2022, she received the Hadada Award from The Paris Review. She is currently Professor of African and African American Studies in Residence at Harvard University.

Olivia Laing is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic, who books have been translated into twenty-one languages. They’re the author of eight books, including The Lonely City, Everybody and the Sunday Times number one bestseller, The Garden Against Time. Laing’s first novel, Crudo, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and in 2018 they were awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for non-fiction.

Gaylene Gould explores a more equitable, compassionate, and possible world. A socially engaged artist, writer and broadcaster she creates works that unearth buried stories in people and places especially those that exist on the margins. Her works are research-led and participatory, making room for multiple voices alongside her own. She has been commissioned by the Tate, V&A, Durham University amongst others has created arts documentaries for the BBC and is host of the Serpentine podcast Reworlding and Intimacies. She is currently creating a healing well in a community garden inspired by the legend of Mary Woolaston, a 17th Century Black well keeper.

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