PRESS

Tea By the Sea | Publication: June 9, 2020

Print, Online and Podcasts

Oprah Magazine

The 7 Best Caribbean Books for Your 2021 Reading List, According to Rebel Women Lit's Readers' Awards. <Read More.>

Caribbean Beat Magazine

Bookshelf (Jan/Feb 2021) | Book reviews. <Read more.>

Fordham Magazine

Seen, Heard, Read: ‘Los Espookys,’ ‘Blindspot,’ and ‘Tea By the Sea’. <Read more.>

LitHub

5 Books You May Have Missed in June: From Harvard to Jamaica to Northern Ireland. <Read more.>

DC Trending

A story of family, survival & agency: Review by Norah Vawter. <Read more.>

New York Post

Named a Best Book of the Week - June 13, 2020. <Read more.>

Ms. Magazine

Featured in the June 2020 Reads for the Rest of Us. <Read more.>

Poets & Writers

Featured in Page One: Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin. <Read more.>

The Rumpus

An Exploration of Belonging: Talking With Donna Hemans, where I chat with author Aimee Liu about the story of Tea by the Sea, the themes that haunt me, as well as process, structure, agency, and being identified as a postcolonial Caribbean immigrant writer. <Read more.>

Moms Don’t Have Time to Read

On this podcast with Zibby Owens, I talked about piecing Tea By the Sea together, my biggest takeaway from an MFA program, and the process of writing and evoking emotions that I haven't experienced myself. <Listen.>

Washington Independent Review of Books

A discussion of identity, belonging, releasing a book during the pandemic, and my ideal cup of tea. <Read more.>

Booklist

One man’s drastic decision has heartbreaking consequences for the women in his life in the latest novel from Hemans. <Read more.>

Pree, September 2019.

An interview with Donna Hemans, author of Tea by the Sea. <Read more.>

Jamaica Gleaner, November 11, 2015.

In the category for children up to 12 years old, Morrison, walked away with The Jean D'Costa Award for her manuscript, A Better Me: A Better You. McCaulay received The Vic Reid Award in the young adult category for her novel, Gone to Drift, and Hemans took home The Una Marson Award in the adult category with, Tea By the Sea. <Read more.>

River Woman | Publication: January 2002

New York Times, July 2002.

In this graceful, absorbing first novel, the swell of gossip rises like a spring tide through the child's funeral and burial as the accusations run unchecked. Standfast itself is the novel's true protagonist, its moods shifting according to a sort of collective emotional climate that alternates between the tempestuous and the merely bleak. <Read more.>

Kirkus Reviews, December 2001 (starred review).

A remarkably assured and insightful debut offers a finely tuned, sympathetic portrait of a teenaged mother whose toddler drowns accidentally in the river where she’s washing clothes...Flawlessly interweaving personal and social tragedy with the imagery of interior and exterior spaces. Jamaica-born Hemans’s rare and distinctive debut is not only a tale for our time, but one for all time. <Read more.>

Publisher's Weekly, December 2001.

The Rio Minho in Jamaica provides much more than a setting for this potent, accomplished debut. <Read more.>

Donna Hemans