Tiphanie Yanique Land of Love and Drowning (Riverhead, 2015)
With her first novel Land of Love and Drowning (Riverhead, 2015), Tiphanie Yanique, who was born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, offers a rare window into the political and historical underbelly of the sprawling but definitely not virginal Virgin Islands. Pulsing with sex and other messiness, the novel builds well on her debut story collection How To Escape a Leper Colony: A Novella and Stories (Graywolf Press, 2010.)