West Indian literature - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Caribbean literature is the term generally accepted for the literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

of the various territories of the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

region. Literature in English specifically from the former British West Indies

British West Indies

The British West Indies was a term used to describe the islands in and around the Caribbean that were part of the British Empire The term was sometimes used to include British Honduras and British Guiana, even though these territories are not geographically part of the Caribbean...

may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, West Indian literature, although in modern contexts the latter term is rare.

Most of these territories have become independent nations since the 1960s, though some retain colonial ties to the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. They all share, apart from the English language, a number of political, cultural, and social ties which make it useful to consider their literary output in a single category. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language—whether written in English, Spanish, French, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.

Territories included in the category "West Indian"

The literature of Anguilla

Anguilla

Anguilla is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin...

, Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda

Antigua and Barbuda is a twin-island nation lying between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of two major inhabited islands, Antigua and Barbuda, and a number of smaller islands...

, Aruba

Aruba

Aruba is a 33 km-long island of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, located 27 km north of the coast of Venezuela and 130 km east of Guajira Peninsula...

, Curaçao

Curaçao

Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...

, the Bahamas, Barbados

Barbados

Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

, Belize

Belize

Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...

, the British Virgin Islands

British Virgin Islands

The Virgin Islands, often called the British Virgin Islands , is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union, located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico. The islands make up part of the Virgin Islands archipelago, the remaining islands constituting the U.S...

, the Cayman Islands

Cayman Islands

The Cayman Islands is a British Overseas Territory and overseas territory of the European Union located in the western Caribbean Sea. The territory comprises the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and northwest of Jamaica...

, Dominica

Dominica

Dominica , officially the Commonwealth of Dominica, is an island nation in the Lesser Antilles region of the Caribbean Sea, south-southeast of Guadeloupe and northwest of Martinique. Its size is and the highest point in the country is Morne Diablotins, which has an elevation of . The Commonwealth...

, Grenada

Grenada

Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...

, Guyana

Guyana

Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...

, Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

, Montserrat

Montserrat

Montserrat is a British overseas territory located in the Leeward Islands, part of the chain of islands called the Lesser Antilles in the West Indies. This island measures approximately long and wide, giving of coastline...

, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname

Suriname

Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname , is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and on the north by the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as...

, Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...

, Turks and Caicos and the U.S. Virgin Islands would normally be considered to belong to the wider category of West Indian literature. Some literary scholars might also include Bermuda

Bermuda

Bermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, its nearest landmass is Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, about to the west-northwest. It is about south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and northeast of Miami, Florida...

, though geographically Bermuda is not part of the Caribbean and cultural ties with the region are not very strong.

Development of the idea of West Indian literature

The term "West Indies" first began to achieve wide currency in the 1950s, when writers like Samuel Selvon

Samuel Selvon

Samuel Selvon was a Trinidad-born writer. Selvon was educated at Naparima College, San Fernando before moving to London, England in the 1950s, and later to Alberta, Canada. He is known for novels such as The Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending...

, John Hearne

John Hearne

John Hearne may be:* J. T. Hearne , British cricket bowler* J. W. Hearne , British cricket all-rounder* John Edgar Colwell Hearne , Jamaican-born Canadian writer & educator...

, Edgar Mittelholzer

Edgar Mittelholzer

Edgar Mittelholzer was a Guyanese novelist. Born in New Amsterdam, the country's second largest town, he was the son of William Austin Mittelholzer and his wife Rosamond Mabel, née Leblanc...

, V.S. Naipaul, and George Lamming

George Lamming

George Lamming , is a novelist and poet. He was born in Barbados and teaches at Brown University.- Early life and education :George Lamming was born on June 8, 1927 in Carrington Village, Barbados, of mixed African and English parentage. After his mother married his stepfather, Lamming split his...

began to be published in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

. A sense of a single literature developing across the islands was also encouraged in the 1940s by the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

radio programme Caribbean Voices, which featured stories and poems written by West Indian authors, recorded in London under the direction of producer Henry Swanzy, and broadcast back to the islands. Magazines like Kyk-Over-Al
Kyk-Over-Al (magazine)
Kyk-Over-Al is a literary magazine published in Guyana, the only survivor of the three pioneering literary magazines founded in the 1940s that helped define postwar West Indian literature . Kyk-Over-Al is indelibly associated with the Guyanese poet and editor A.J...

in Guyana, Bim
Bim
Bim is a 1974 Trinidad and Tobago film written by Raoul Pantin and directed by Hugh A. Robertson. It was described by Bruce Paddington as "one of the most important films to be produced in Trinidad and Tobago".-Plot:...

in Barbados, and Focus in Jamaica, which published work by writers from across the region, also encouraged links and helped build an audience.

Many—perhaps most—West Indian writers have found it necessary to leave their home territories and base themselves in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

, the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, or Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

in order to make a living from their work—in some cases spending the greater parts of their careers away from the territories of their birth. Critics in their adopted territories might argue that, for instance, V.S. Naipaul ought to be considered a British writer instead of a Trinidadian writer, or Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid is a Caribbean novelist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in the city of St. John's on the island of Antigua in the nation of Antigua and Barbuda...

and Paule Marshall American writers, but most West Indian readers and critics still consider these writers "West Indian".

West Indian literature ranges over subjects and themes as wide as those of any other "national" literature, but in general many West Indian writers share a special concern with questions of identity, ethnicity, and language that rise out of the Caribbean historical experience.

Two West Indian writers have won the Nobel Prize for Literature: Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott

Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...

(1992), born in St. Lucia, resident mostly in Trinidad during the 1960s and 70s, and partly in the United States since then; and V.S. Naipaul, born in Trinidad and resident in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

since the 1950. (Saint-John Perse

Saint-John Perse

Saint-John Perse was a French poet, awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1960 "for the soaring flight and evocative imagery of his poetry." He was also a major French diplomat from 1914 to 1940, after which he lived primarily in the USA until 1967.-Biography:Alexis Leger was...

, who won the Nobel Prize in 1960, was born in the French territory of Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...

.)

Other notable names in (anglophone) Caribbean literature have included Earl Lovelace

Earl Lovelace

For the peerage, see Earl of Lovelace.Earl Lovelace is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer....

, Austin Clarke

Austin Clarke

Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke, is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. Born in St...

, Claude McKay

Claude McKay

Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...

, Orlando Patterson

Orlando Patterson

Orlando Patterson is a Jamaica-born American historical and cultural sociologist known for his work regarding issues of race in the America, as well as the sociology of development, currently holding the John Cowles chair in Sociology at Harvard University. Patterson took his B.Sc in Economics...

, Andrew Salkey

Andrew Salkey

Andrew Salkey was a novelist, poet, freelance writer and journalist of Jamaican and Haitian origin. Salkey was born in Panama but was raised in Jamaica...

, Edward Kamau Brathwaite

Edward Kamau Brathwaite

Edward Kamau Brathwaite is widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. A professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite is the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry, Born to Slow Horses.Brathwaite...

(who was born in Barbados and has lived in Ghana and Jamaica), Linton Kwesi Johnson

Linton Kwesi Johnson

Linton Kwesi Johnson is a UK-based dub poet. He became the second living poet, and the only black poet, to be published in the Penguin Classics series. His poetry involves the recitation of his own verse in Jamaican Patois over dub-reggae, usually written in collaboration with renowned British...

, and Michelle Cliff

Michelle Cliff

Michelle Cliff is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism...

, to name only a few. In more recent times, a number of new literary voices have emerged from the Caribbean as well as the Caribbean diaspora, including Kittitian Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips is a British writer with a Caribbean background, best known as a novelist. He is now professor at Yale University and a visiting professor at Barnard College of Columbia University.-Life:...

(who has lived in the UK since one month of age), Edwidge Danticat, a Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

an immigrant to the United States; Anthony Kellman from Barbados, who divides his time between Barbados and the U.S; Andrea Levy

Andrea Levy

Andrea Levy is a British author, born in London to Jamaican parents who sailed to England on the Empire Windrush in 1948.-Identity and writings:...

of the United Kingdom, Jamaicans Colin Channer

Colin Channer

Colin Channer is a Jamaican writer, often referred to as "Bob Marley with a pen," due to the spiritual, sensual, social themes presented from a literary Jamaican perspective. Indeed, his first two full length novels, Waiting in Vain and Satisfy My Soul, bear the titles of well known Marley songs...

and Marlon James, the author of John Crow's Devil, The Book of Night Women, the unpublished screenplay "Dead Men", and the short story "Under Cover of Darkness", and Antiguan Marie-Elena John

Marie-Elena John

Marie-Elena John is a Caribbean writer whose first novel, Unburnable, was published in 2006. She was born and raised in Antigua and is a former development specialist of the African Development Foundation, the World Council of Churches’ Program to Combat Racism, and Global Rights , where she...

Barbados

Francis Woodbine Blackman
Woodie Blackman
Francis Woodbine Blackman was a Caribbean author, former secretary of the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus, a member of the Dalkeith Methodist Church, and a retired consultant of the Canadian Training Aid Programme.-Early life:His parents, James T. Blackman and his mother Etta ,...
Kamau Brathwaite
Timothy Callender
Austin Clarke
Austin Clarke
Austin Ardinel Chesterfield Clarke, is a Canadian novelist, essayist and short story writer who lives in Toronto, Ontario. Born in St...
Frank Collymore
Frank Collymore
Frank Appleton Collymore MBE was a famous Barbadian author, poet, stage performer and painter. His nickname was "Barbadian Man of the Arts"....
Geoffrey Drayton
A. N. Forde
Anthony Kellman
Anthony Kellman
Anthony Kellman is a Barbados-born writer and musician educated at Combermere School, at the University of the West Indies and in the U.S...
George Lamming
George Lamming
George Lamming , is a novelist and poet. He was born in Barbados and teaches at Brown University.- Early life and education :George Lamming was born on June 8, 1927 in Carrington Village, Barbados, of mixed African and English parentage. After his mother married his stepfather, Lamming split his...
Paule Marshall
Paule Marshall
Paule Marshall is an American author. She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn to Barbadian parents and educated at Girls High School, Brooklyn College and Hunter College . Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose...
John Wickham
John Wickham
John Wickham may refer to:*John Wickham , British Brigadier, born 1897*John Wickham , 18th-century American attorney*John A. Wickham, Jr., 20th-century American general...

Dominican Republic

Julio Vega Battle
Junot Diaz
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer and creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience...
José Cepeda García
Julia Alvarez
Julia Álvarez
Julia Alvarez is a Dominican-American poet, novelist, and essayist. Born in New York of Dominican descent, she spent the first ten years of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, until her father's involvement in a political rebellion forced her family to flee the country.Alvarez rose to...

Cuba

Antonio Benitez-Rojo
Antonio Benitez-Rojo
Antonio Benítez-Rojo was a Cuban novelist, essayist and short-story writer. He was widely regarded as the most significant Cuban author of his generation. His work has been translated into nine languages and collected in more than 50 anthologies.Born in Havana, he lived in Cuba with his mother...
Carlos Moore (Cuban writer)
Nancy Morejon
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón is one of Cuba's major authors and poets. She has gained recognition for work whose themes are centered on women and the Afro-Cuban experience.-Life history:...
Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Guillén
Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista was a Cuban poet, journalist, political activist, and writer. He is best remembered as the national poet of Cuba.Guillén was born in Camagüey, Cuba...

Guyana

John Agard
John Agard
John Agard is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in the United Kingdom.-Background:...
E. R. Braithwaite
E. R. Braithwaite
Edward Ricardo Braithwaite is a Guyanese novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against black people...
Jan Carew
Jan Carew
Jan Rynveld Carew is a novelist, playwright, poet and educator. His works, diverse in their forms and multifaceted, makes of Jan Carew an important intellectual of the Caribbean world...
Martin Carter
Martin Carter
Martin Wylde Carter was a Guyanese poet, who has been compared in stature to W. B. Yeats and Pablo Neruda, as well as being called "the most Caribbean of Caribbean poets". Of mixed European, East Indian, and African descent, he began publishing in 1950 in Thunder Martin Wylde Carter (June 7,...
Cyril Dabydeen
Cyril Dabydeen
Cyril Dabydeen is a writer who was born in the Canje, Guyana, a locality which also produced his contemporaries Arnold Itwaru and Jan Shinebourne.He grew up in a sugar plantation with the sense of Indian indenture rooted in his family background Cyril Dabydeen (born 1945) is a writer who was born...
David Dabydeen
David Dabydeen
David Dabydeen is a Guyanese-born critic, writer and novelist.Dabydeen was born in Berbice, Guyana, his birth registered at New Amsterdam Registrar of Births as David Horace Clarence Harilal Sookram...
Fred D'Aguiar
Fred D'Aguiar
Fred D'Aguiar is an author of poetry, novels, and drama.D'Aguiar was born in London. His parents were Guyanese. He spent his childhood, from the age of two to twelve, in Guyana. His work has received much, and growing, acclaim. His Bill of Rights, about the Jonestown Massacre of 1978, was a...
O. R. Dathorne
O. R. Dathorne
Oscar Ronald Dathorne was a Guyanese educator, novelist, poet and critic. Born in Georgetown, Guyana he attended Queen’s College prior to his parents moving the family to England in 1953...
Beryl Gilroy
Beryl Gilroy
Beryl Agatha Gilroy was a novelist...
Wilson Harris
Wilson Harris
Sir Theodore Wilson Harris is a Guyanese writer. He initially wrote poetry, but has since become a well-known novelist and essayist. His writing style is often said to be abstract and densely metaphorical, and his subject matter wide-ranging.Wilson Harris was born in New Amsterdam in what was then...
Roy A. K. Heath
Ruel Johnson
Ruel Johnson
Ruel Johnson is an award winning Guyanese author.Johnson won the 2002 Guyana Prize for Literature for best first fiction manuscript for a collection of short stories entitled Ariadne and Other Stories, which he self-published the following year with assistance from COURTS and GuyEnterprise...
Oonya Kempadoo
Oonya Kempadoo
Oonya Kempadoo is a writer who was born in Sussex, England, in 1966 of Guyanese parents. She was brought up in Guyana and has studied art in Amsterdam. She has also lived in Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Tobago, and now lives in Grenada....
Peter Kempadoo
Peter Kempadoo
Peter "Lauchmonen" Kempadoo is a writer from Guyana. He was born on a sugar estate in 1926. He has worked as a writer, broadcaster and development worker....
Mark McWatt
Mark McWatt
Mark McWatt is a Guyanese writer and educator.Born in Guyana, McWatt studied at the University of Toronto and Leeds University, where he completed a Ph.D...
Pauline Melville
Pauline Melville
Pauline Melville is a Guyanese-born writer and actress. Her mother was English, and her father Guyanese. Her first book, Shape-Shifter , a collection of short stories, won the 1991 Commonwealth Writers' Prize , and the Guardian Fiction Prize.The book consists of a number of short stories dealing...
Edgar Mittelholzer
Edgar Mittelholzer
Edgar Mittelholzer was a Guyanese novelist. Born in New Amsterdam, the country's second largest town, he was the son of William Austin Mittelholzer and his wife Rosamond Mabel, née Leblanc...
Grace Nichols
Grace Nichols
Grace Nichols is a Guyanese poet. She was born in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1950. After working in Guyana as a teacher and journalist, she emigrated to the UK in 1977. Much of her poetry is characterised by Caribbean rhythms and culture, and influenced by Guyanese and Amerindian folklore.Her first...
Sasenarine Persaud
Sasenarine Persaud
Sasenarine Persaud is an essayist, novelist, short story writer, and poet. He is the author of eleven books: eight poetry collections, two novels, and a book of short stories. His latest books are, Lantana Strangling Ixora, TSAR Books and In a Boston Night, TSAR Publications...
A. J. Seymour
A. J. Seymour
Arthur James Seymour , poet, essayist, memoirist, and editor of the literary journal Kyk-Over-Al, was born on 12 January 1914, in Georgetown, British Guiana, to James Tudor Seymour, a land surveyor, and his wife Philippine, née Dey...
Jan Shinebourne
Jan Shinebourne
Jan Lowe Shinebourne is a Guyanese novelist who was born in Canje, Berbice, Guyana and emigrated to London, England in 1970.In Timepiece Sandra Yansen must leave behind the close ties of family and village when she goes away to take up a job as a reporter in Georgetown...
Eric Walrond
Denis Williams
Denis Williams
Denis Williams was a Guyanese painter, author and archaeologist.Williams' early promise as a painter won him a two-year British Council Scholarship to the Camberwell School of Art in London in 1946. He lived in London for the next ten years, during which he taught fine art and held several one-man...

Jamaica

Lindsay Barrett
Lindsay Barrett
Carlton Lindsay Barrett is a Jamaican poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist and photographer who lives in Nigeria.-Life and career:...
Edward Baugh
Edward Baugh
Edward Alston Cecil Baugh is a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott.He was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and began writing poetry at Titchfield High School...
Vera Bell
Alvin Bennett
Alvin Bennett
Alvin S. "Al" Bennett , from Joiner, Arkansas, was a record company executive who worked at Dot Records, then Liberty Records. He was president of Liberty until 1968. At that time he founded Cream Records, which absorbed Hi Records in 1977. Bennett is also known for lending his name to the...
Louise Bennett-Coverly
Lebert Bethune
Erna Brodber
Erna Brodber
Erna Brodber is a Jamaican writer and sociologist. Born in Woodside, Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica, she won the Caribbean and Canadian regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989 for her novel Myal. Brodber currently works as a freelance writer, researcher and lecturer in Jamaica...
George Campbell
George Campbell
George Campbell may refer to:Sportsmen*George Campbell , a professional footballer from Scotland who played for Aberdeen FC in the Scottish Premier League, and in Australia's National League...
H. D. Carberry
Colin Channer
Colin Channer
Colin Channer is a Jamaican writer, often referred to as "Bob Marley with a pen," due to the spiritual, sensual, social themes presented from a literary Jamaican perspective. Indeed, his first two full length novels, Waiting in Vain and Satisfy My Soul, bear the titles of well known Marley songs...
Kwame Dawes
Kwame Dawes
Kwame Senu Neville Dawes is a poet, actor, editor, critic, musician, and Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. He currently works as editor-in-chief at the Prairie Schooner. -Life:...
Jean D'Costa
Herbert de Lisser
Andrew Edwards XIV
Gloria Escoffery
John Figueroa
John Figueroa
John Joseph Maria Figueroa was a Jamaican poet and educator, of Galician origin.Figueroa taught at the School of Education of the University of the West Indies Mona campus, and at universities in Britain, Africa, and the United States...
Honor Ford-Smith
Honor Ford-Smith
Honor Maria Ford-Smith is a Jamaican actress, playwright, scholar, and poet. The daughter of a brown Jamaican mother and an English father, Ford-Smith is sometimes described as "Jamaica white," signalling a person of mixed race who appears white.Ford-Smith, who studied theatre at the University of...
Lorna Goodison
Lorna Goodison
Lorna Goodison is a Jamaican poet, a leading West Indian writer of the generation born after World War II, currently dividing her time between Jamaica and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she teaches at the University of Michigan.-Biography:...
John Hearne
John Hearne
John Hearne may be:* J. T. Hearne , British cricket bowler* J. W. Hearne , British cricket all-rounder* John Edgar Colwell Hearne , Jamaican-born Canadian writer & educator...
A. L. Hendriks
A. L. Hendriks
Arthur Lemiere Hendriks was a Jamaican poet, writer, and broadcasting director . He was born in 1922 in Kingston, Jamaica, to a Jamaican father and a French mother. He was father to five daughters and two sons. Mr...
Constance Hollar
Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican science fiction and fantasy writer and editor who lives in Canada. Her novels and short stories such as those in her collection Skin Folk often draw on Caribbean history and language, and its traditions of oral and written storytelling.Hopkinson has...
Marlon James (author)
Archie Lindo
Roger Mais
Roger Mais
Roger Mais was a Jamaican journalist, novelist, poet, and playwright. He was born to a middle-class family in Kingston, Jamaica. By 1951, Mais had won ten first prizes in West Indian literary competitions...
Una Marson
Una Marson
Una Maud Victoria Marson was a Jamaican feminist, activist and writer, producing poems, plays and programmes for the BBC. Marson traveled to London in 1932 and worked for the BBC during World War II.- Early years 1905-1932 :...
Basil McFarlane
John E. C. McFarlane
Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
Anthony McNeill
Anthony McNeill
Roy Anthony "Tony" McNeill was a Jamaican poet, considered one of the most promising West Indian writers of his generation, whose career was cut short by his early death....
Pamela Mordecai
Mervyn Morris
Mervyn Morris
Mervyn Eustace Morris OM is a poet and professor emeritus at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica.- Biography :...
Mutabaruka
Mutabaruka
Mutabaruka is a dub poet. His name comes from the Rwandan language and translates as "one who is always victorious". He lives in Potosi District, St. James with his significant other, Yvonne, and their two childern. Mutabaruka continues to perform and write poems on every issue known to man...
Rex Nettleford
Rex Nettleford
Ralston Milton "Rex" Nettleford, OM ,FIJ, OCC, was a Jamaican scholar, social critic, choreographer, and Vice-Chancellor Emeritus of The University of the West Indies , the leading research university in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Born in Falmouth, Jamaica, Nettleford...
Orlando Patterson
Orlando Patterson
Orlando Patterson is a Jamaica-born American historical and cultural sociologist known for his work regarding issues of race in the America, as well as the sociology of development, currently holding the John Cowles chair in Sociology at Harvard University. Patterson took his B.Sc in Economics...
Geoffrey Philp
Geoffrey Philp
Geoffrey Philp is a Jamaican poet, novelist, and playwright. He is the author of the novel, Benjamin, My Son and five poetry collections: Exodus and Other Poems, hurricane center, Florida Bound, xango music, and Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas...
Velma Pollard
Patricia Powell
Patricia Powell
Patricia Powell is a Jamaican writer.Born in Jamaica, she moved to the United States in her late teens. She received her bachelor's degree at Wellesley College, and an MFA in creative writing from Brown University, where she studied with Michael Ondaatje, among others.She began her teaching...
Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine is an American poet and playwright born in 1963 and raised in Kingston, Jamaica and New York City. She has taught at Case Western Reserve University, Barnard College, University of Georgia, and in the writing program at the University of Houston. As of 2011, Rankine is the Henry G...
V. S. Reid
Victor Stafford Reid
Victor Stafford Reid was a Jamaican writer born in Kingston, Jamaica who wrote with an intent of influencing the younger generations. He was awarded the silver and gold Musgrave medals , the Order of Jamaica and the Norman Manley Award for Excellence in Literature in 1981...
Namba Roy
Andrew Salkey
Andrew Salkey
Andrew Salkey was a novelist, poet, freelance writer and journalist of Jamaican and Haitian origin. Salkey was born in Panama but was raised in Jamaica...
Dennis Scott
Olive Senior
Olive Senior
Olive Marjorie Senior is a Jamaican poet and short story writer currently living in Canada.She went to Montego Bay High School For Girls, then at age 19 joined the staff of the Jamaica Gleaner in Kingston. She later won a scholarship to study journalism in Cardiff, Wales, and then at Carleton...
M. G. Smith
M. G. Smith
Michael Garfield Smith OM was a Jamaican poet and social anthropologist. Smith was the son of a descendant of English army officers and merchants, and his mother a 'coloured' nurse who died in childbirth. Smith served as Franklin M. Crosby Professor Emeritus of the Human Environment at Yale...
Vivian Virtue
Anthony C. Winkler
Sylvia Wynter
Sylvia Wynter
Sylvia Wynter, OJ, born in Cuba to Percival Wynter and Lola Maude Wynter, on 17 January 1928, is a Jamaican novelist,[1], dramatist[2], critic and writer of essays.[3]-Biography:...

Puerto Rico

Mayra Santos-Febres
Mayra Santos-Febres
Mayra Santos-Febres is a Puerto Rican author, poet, novelist, professor of literature, and literary critic who has garnered fame at home and abroad....
Rosario Ferré
Rosario Ferré
Dr. Rosario Ferré is a Puerto Rican writer, poet and essayist. Her father, Luis A. Ferré, was the third elected Governor of Puerto Rico, and the founding father of the New Progressive Party. When her mother, Lorenza Ramírez de Arellano, died in 1970...
Ana Lydia Vega
Ana Lydia Vega
Ana Lydia Vega is a celebrated Puerto Rican female writer. She has received the Premio Juan Rulfo and the Premio Casa de las Américas . Vega was a professor of French literature and Caribbean studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras...
Esmeralda Santiago
Esmeralda Santiago
Esmeralda Santiago is a Puerto Rican author and former actress known for her novels and memoirs.-Early life:Santiago was born on 17 May 1948 in the San Juan district of Villa Palmeras, Santurce, Puerto Rico. In 1961, she came to the continental United States when she was thirteen years old, the...
Aurora Levins Morales
Aurora Levins Morales
Aurora Levins Morales is a Puerto Rican Jewish writer and poet. She is significant within Latina feminism as well as other social justice movements.-Early life and education:...
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
Lola Rodríguez de Tió
Lola Rodríguez de Tio
Lola Rodríguez de TióThis name uses Spanish marriage naming customs; the first is the maiden family name " Rodríguez" and the second or matrimonial family name is "Tió"., , was the first Puerto Rican born poetess to establish herself a reputation as a great poet throughout all of Latin America...
Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia
Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia
Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia, born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1963, is a literary voice from the Puerto Rican literary scene. Member and co-editor of the Poetry journal Filo de juego the Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña published, in 2002, his early poetry under a volume entitled El hilo para...
Eugenio María de Hostos
Eugenio María de Hostos
Eugenio María de Hostos known as "El Ciudadano de América" , was a Puerto Rican educator, philosopher, intellectual, lawyer, sociologist and independence advocate....
Luis Palés Matos
Luis Palés Matos
Luis Palés Matos was a Puerto Rican poet who is credited with creating the poetry genre known as Afro-Antillano.-Early years:...
Manuel Ramos Otero
Manuel Ramos Otero
Manuel Ramos Otero was a Puerto Rican writer. He is widely considered to be the most important openly gay twentieth-century Puerto Rican writer who wrote in Spanish, and his work was often controversial due to its sexual and political content...
Luis Rafael Sánchez
Luis Rafael Sanchez
Dr. Luis Rafael Sánchez a.k.a. "Wico" is a Puerto Rican playwright. Possibly his best known play is La Pasión según Antigona Pérez , a tragedy based on the life of Olga Viscal Garriga-Early years:...
José Luis Vega
José Luis Vega
José Luis Vega is a Puerto Rican poet and academicIn 1972, Vega founded Ventana a poetry magazine that "marked a deliberate distance from the social realist poetry that was in vogue at the time in the country, in favor of a form of writing that was more self-relfexive and intimate."Vega is...

Trinidad and Tobago

James Christopher Aboud
Lyndon Baptiste
Michael Anthony
Michael Anthony (author)
Michael Anthony, an eminent Caribbean author and historian, was born in Mayaro, Trinidad and Tobago on February 10, 1932 to Nathaniel Anthony and Eva Jones Lazarus. After an unsatisfying job as a young foundry worker in Pointe-à-Pierre for five years, he sought to become a journalist, but poems of...
Robert Antoni
Robert Antoni
Robert Antoni is a West Indian writer who was awarded the 1999 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction by The Paris Review for "My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head".- Background :...
Kevin Baldeosingh
Kevin Baldeosingh
Kevin Baldeosingh is a Trinidadian newspaper columnist, author and Humanist, who has been involved in many controversial social issues. He now works with the Trinidad and Tobago Express as a writer on a freelance basis.-Writing:...
Dionne Brand
Dionne Brand
Dionne Brand is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was named Toronto's third Poet Laureate in September 2009.-Biography:...
Lennox Brown
Lennox Brown
Lennox Sydney Brown was a South African cricketer who played in 2 Tests from 1931 to 1932....
Wayne Brown
Wayne Brown
Wayne Larry Brown is an English professional football goalkeeper who currently plays for Oxford United.-Career:Born in Southampton, former bricklayer Brown made a switch from Bashley to Bristol City for £40,000 in December 1992. Between 1993 and 1996 he made only 24 appearance for the Robins due...
Vahni Capildeo
Vahni Capildeo
Surya Vahni Priya Capildeo is a Trinidadian writer, and a member of the extended Capildeo family which has produced notable Trinidadian politicians and writers ....
Wilfred Cartey
Faustin Charles
Ramabai Espinet
Albert Gomes
Albert Gomes
Albert Maria Gomes , a Trinidad and Tobago unionist, politician, and writer of Portuguese descent, was the first Chief Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. He was the founder of the Political Progress Groups and later led the Party of Political Progress Groups...
Cecil Gray
Frank Hercules
Errol Hill
Errol Hill
Errol Gaston Hill was a Trinidadian-born playwright and theater historian. He was the first tenured African American faculty member at Dartmouth College in the United States, joining their drama department in 1968....
Merle Hodge
Merle Hodge
BiographyMerle Hodge was born in 1944, in Curepe, Trinidad, the daughter of an immigration officer. She received both her elementary and high school education in Trinidad, and as a student of Bishop Anstey's High School, she won the Trinidad and Tobago Girls Island Scholarship in 1962. The...
C. L. R. James
C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James , who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts...
Anthony Joseph
Anthony Joseph
Anthony Joseph is a British poet, novelist, musician and lecturer.Joseph was born in Trinidad and was raised by his grandparents. He began writing as a young child and cites his main influences as the Calypso, surrealism, jazz, the spiritual Baptist church that his grandparents attended, and the...
Ismith Khan
Roi Kwabena
Roi Kwabena
Dr. Roi Ankhkara Kwabena was a cultural anthropologist, who worked with all age ranges in Europe, Africa, Latin-America and the Caribbean for over 30 years....
Harold "Sonny" Ladoo
Harold Sonny Ladoo
Harold Sonny Ladoo was a Caribbean novelist and author of two books documenting the struggles of living in poverty in the Hindu communities of Trinidad and Tobago.Ladoo was born and grew up in an environment much like the world of his novels...
John La Rose
John La Rose
John La Rose was a political and cultural activist, poet, writer, publisher, and Chairman of the George Padmore Institute...
Earl Lovelace
Earl Lovelace
For the peerage, see Earl of Lovelace.Earl Lovelace is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer....
Rabindranath Maharaj
Rabindranath Maharaj
Rabindranath Maharaj is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and a founding editor of the literary journal Lichen...
Ian McDonald
Alfred Mendes
Shani Mootoo
Shani Mootoo
Shani Mootoo is a writer who was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1958 to Trinidadian parents. She was raised in Trinidad, where she initially began to explore the artistic and literary world. She began writing and creating visual that drew on her ideas regarding sexual relations between members of the...
Shiva Naipaul
Shiva Naipaul
Shiva Naipaul , born Shivadhar Srivinasa Naipaul in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, was a Trinidadian and British novelist and journalist.Shiva Naipaul was the younger brother of novelist V. S. Naipaul...
V. S. Naipaul
V. S. Naipaul
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul, TC is a Nobel prize-winning Indo-Trinidadian-British writer who is known for his novels focusing on the legacy of the British Empire's colonialism...
Lakshmi Persaud
Lakshmi Persaud
Lakshmi Persaud is a Indo-Caribbean novelist. She was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1939. She is classified also as a novelist of the Indian diaspora. Some of her writings are on Indo-Caribbean themes as well as themes of cultural change. She has published four novels...
Jennifer Rahim
Ronald Ramdin
Eric Roach
Lawrence Scott
Lawrence Scott
Lawrence Scott is a novelist from Trinidad & Tobago, currently living in London and Trinidad. He is presently a Senior Research Fellow at The Academy for the Arts, Letters, Culture and Public Affairs at the University of Trinidad & Tobago ....
Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon was a Trinidad-born writer. Selvon was educated at Naparima College, San Fernando before moving to London, England in the 1950s, and later to Alberta, Canada. He is known for novels such as The Lonely Londoners and Moses Ascending...
Frances-Anne Solomon
Frances-Anne Solomon
Frances-Anne Solomon is a Trinidadian-Canadian-British filmmaker, writer, producer, and entrepreneur.Born in England of Trinidadian parents, she began her professional life at the BBC in England, where she built a successful career as a Producer first with BBC Radio then with BBC television drama...
John Stewart
Eric Williams
Eric Williams
Eric Eustace Williams served as the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. He served from 1956 until his death in 1981. He was also a noted Caribbean historian, and is widely regarded as "The Father of The Nation."...

West Indian literary periodicals

The Beacon
The Beacon
The Beacon is the student-run newspaper of Florida International University in Miami, Florida and has a circulation of 7,500. The Beacon is published thrice weekly in a compact format during the Fall and Spring semesters and once a week on Wednesday during the Summer...

(Trinidad)
Bim (Barbados)
DIALOGUE
Dialogue
Dialogue is a literary and theatrical form consisting of a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people....

(Trinidad)
The Caribbean Writer (U. S. Virgin Islands)
Focus (Jamaica)
Kyk-Over-Al
Kyk-Over-Al (magazine)
Kyk-Over-Al is a literary magazine published in Guyana, the only survivor of the three pioneering literary magazines founded in the 1940s that helped define postwar West Indian literature . Kyk-Over-Al is indelibly associated with the Guyanese poet and editor A.J...

(Guyana)
The Caribbean Review of Books
Caribbean Review of Books
The Caribbean Review of Books is a quarterly magazine published in Port of Spain, Trinidad, reviewing books of Caribbean interest—by Caribbean authors or about the Caribbean—and printing original fiction, poetry, and other literary material...

(Trinidad)
Savacou
Savacou
Savacou Magazine was founded in 1970 by Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Andrew Salkey, and John La Rose. Savacou grew out of the Caribbean Artists Movement of the 1960's that was mostly concerned with Caribbean artistic production and with consolidating a broad artistic alliance between all 'Third World'...

(journal of the Caribbean Artists' Movement, London)

Territories included in the category "West Indian"

Development of the idea of West Indian literature

Barbados

Dominican Republic

Cuba

Guyana

Jamaica

Puerto Rico

Trinidad and Tobago

West Indian literary periodicals

See also