Alecia McKenzie is a writer, artist and journalist. She is the author of Satellite City, Stories from Yard, Doctor’s Orders, and When the Rain Stopped in Natland, with stories featured in various anthologies such as Girls Night In, Global Tales, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, and Stories from Blue Latitudes. She has reported on a range of issues for several international media companies, and her books have twice won Commonwealth literary awards as well as the Prix Carbet des lycéens in the Francophone Caribbean. Besides French, her work has been translated into several other languages, including Italian, Dutch and Chinese. Her latest book is Sweetheart (Peepal Tree Press). Centering on young Jamaican artist and celebrity Dulcinea Evers, this novel begins with her surprising death in unclear circumstances. In the words of Dulci’s angry, disappointed father, her ineffectual mother, the angry wife who came after her with a machete, and the art critic husband whom she used to obtain an American residency permit, Dulci is shown to have been talented, reckless, and fundamentally alone. It is eventually Aunt Mavis, the solitary and reluctant seer, who finally understands the true challenge of Dulci’s gift. In telling this engaging character’s story as well as the tales of those who knew her, McKenzie offers deepening cycles of understanding and the onward thrust of progressive revelation.
