Occupation novelist, poet Name Lucinda Roy Education King's College London | Nationality British Role Novelist | |
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Born December 19, 1955 (age 68)
Battersea, South London, England ( 1955-12-19 ) Books Lady Moses, The Hotel Alleluia, The humming birds, Wailing the Dead to Sleep | ||
Phi beta kappa society of the cincinnati convocation featuring lucinda roy
Lucinda Roy (born December 19, 1955) is an American-based British novelist, educator and poet.
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Biography
She was born in Battersea, South London, England, to Namba Roy, a Jamaican writer and artist, and Yvonne Roy, an English actor and teacher. She grew up in England and received her Bachelor of Arts in English from King's College London before moving to the United States, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of Arkansas.
In 1988, she published her first collection of poetry, Wailing the Dead to Sleep. American poet Nikki Giovanni wrote the introduction. In 1995, Roy's second poetry collection, The Hummingbirds, was selected by poet Lucille Clifton as the winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize.
Roy has also published two novels, the semi-autobiographical Lady Moses (HarperCollins, 1998) and Hotel Alleluia (HarperCollins, 2000).
She is currently the Director of Creative Writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, and was named Alumni Distinguished Professor of English. She is also the Vice President of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs.
Virginia Tech shooting
In April 2007, after the Virginia Tech shootings, it was revealed that two years earlier, Roy had noted violent tendencies in shooter Seung-Hui Cho's behavior and writings. She warned campus authorities about him at that time, but as Cho had not made any specific threats, the authorities could not take any action or force Cho to get psychiatric help.
Roy subsequently wrote a book about the tragedy, No Right to Remain Silent: The Tragedy at Virginia Tech. She appeared on CBS news with Katie Couric on April 12, 2009, to mark the second anniversary of the shootings. Roy stated that Cho had twice sought attention from a mental health specialist on campus that she had recommended to him, but that Cho "was never really examined."