About Lucinda Roy

A third-person BIO for interviews and speaking engagements

Lucinda Roy is an award-winning novelist, poet, and memoirist. THE BIRD TRIBE is the third book in her DREAMBIRD CHRONICLES trilogy. A distinguished professor emerita, who co-founded the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Tech, she relocated to speculative fiction for her most recent novels because of the freedom it offered to enter realms a rigid adherence to realism doesn’t allow. Her commentaries have appeared in numerous newspapers and journals, including USA Today, the Guardian, and the New York Times. She has lived and taught on three continents and is recognized for her keynotes on creative writing, diversity, campus safety, and higher education. Recently, she wrote and illustrated SAILING HOME ON AN ELEPHANT, her first children's book, due out in spring 2027.

A first-person BIO for readers

For more years than I would have thought possible, I was a teacher who wrote and a writer who taught. And, as time permitted (which it usually didn't) I painted. Pages and canvases inspire me. Apart from time with those I love, writing and painting are the holiest spaces I know. I believe teachers have a duty to cultivate hope. For the first time in my life, I am working on my writing and painting full time--a privilege I don't take for granted. I am a mother and grandmother, a wife, and a rebel whenever circumstances call for rebellion, which in this roiling, messed-up world they often do. I laugh a lot--cackle and snort when I really get going. I'm genetically predisposed to being ornery, but my heritage (English mother, Jamaican father) means my resistance is almost always polite--initially. I tell people I'm a cross between Mary Poppins and Tina Turner, a characterization that's more accurate the older I get. I grew up poor in London where I dreamed of one day being less poor. I was in a reggae band that had no success at all until after I left. I have taught in universities and secondary schools in England, Arkansas, Virginia, Massachusetts, and Sierra Leone, and I've marveled at how courageously even the poorest among us find joy and pass it on to others. Our stories are our penance and our salvation--in equal measure, I think--and writing and painting is how I pray. As Man Cryday, aka the Tree Witch, aka the Gardener of Tears says in my new novel THE BIRD TRIBE, I believe "elders have a sacred obligation to save a future they won't live to see so the young live to see it." I don't think we're handling this sacred obligation very well right now. I believe we must do better; I believe their lives depend on it.

A painting from Lucinda's Middle Passage series: "Suffering the Sea Change: Not Venus But Rising." Oil on canvas, 3' x 4'. ©Lucinda Roy