Dreylan Johnson
Dreylan Johnson is a Guyanese creative who found writing long before she found herself. A Chevening Scholar, she graduated with an MA in Cultural and Creative Industries from the University of Sussex in 2021. She spent her early career in the newsroom, where she developed a love for long-form journalism and capturing the human dimensions […]
Denise deCaires Narain
Dr. Denise deCaires Narain is Emeritus Reader in Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Sussex. She taught courses on postcolonial, Caribbean and women’s writing and on postcolonial feminist discourses. She has published widely on Caribbean women’s writing, including two monographs, Contemporary Caribbean Women’s Poetry: Making Style and Writers and Their Work: Olive Senior, as well […]
Berkley Wendell Semple
Berkley Wendell Semple was born in Guyana. He has published four collections of poetry: Lamplight Teller, which was awarded the 2004 Guyana Prize for Poetry; The Solo Flyer; The Central Station; and Flight and Other Poems, which won the 2023 Guyana Prize for Literature. He has also edited a book of student poems. His poetry […]
Arif Ali
Arif Ali, the esteemed founder of Hansib Publications, has dedicated his life to preserving and promoting Caribbean culture, history, and literature. Recognised for this remarkable contribution, Ali has been named the recipient of the 2024 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters. Born in Danielstown, British Guiana (now Guyana) in 1935, Ali […]
D. Alissa Trotz
Alissa Trotz is a Guyanese Professor of Caribbean Studies at New College and the Director of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. She is also affiliate faculty at the Dame Nita Barrow Institute of Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados; and a member of […]
Lisa Outar
Lisa Outar is an independent scholar and editor who publishes in the fields of Indo-Caribbean literature, Caribbean feminist writing and the connections between the Caribbean and other post-indentureship spaces. From Port Mourant, Guyana, she serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of West Indian Literature and is at work on a manuscript about feminist engagements with […]
Desryn T. A. Collins
Desryn T. A. Collins, the author of How to Become a Calypsonian (HarperCollins) is passionate about the power of books to transform lives and help children discover their own voices. She holds an MA in English from UCL, University of London. This gifted writer was born in Guyana but lives in St John’s, Antigua where […]
Stephanie Bowry
Stephanie Bowry, age seventy four, grew up and was educated in the town of New Amsterdam. She worked in the municipality there and later became very involved in social work and literacy with prisoners. Some of her sweetest moments, however, were with children in story-time and poetry time. She has since written poetry for particular […]
Omari Joseph
Omari Joseph is a recent graduate of The UWI St Augustine. He was born in Saint Lucia, raised in Guyana, and studied in Trinidad and Tobago. The International Tourism Management graduate epitomises the Caribbean citizen. His essays have been published by CAF Development of Latin America and the ILO. In his writing, he often covers the struggles of Caribbean youth and the future of the Caribbean region.
Yolanda T. Marshall
Yolanda T. Marshall is a Guyanese-born author of Keman’s First Carnival, Sweet Sorrel Stand, A Piece of Black Cake for Santa, Miles Away in the Caribbean, and My Soca Birthday Party: with Jollof Rice and Steel Pans, which made CBC’s Best Picture Books list 2020. She lives in Canada and is dedicated to writing children’s […]
Grace Nichols
Her first collection, I is a Long Memoried Woman (1983) won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Other collections (Virago) include The Fat Black Woman’s Poems (1984), Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (1989), Sunrise (1996), winner of the Guyana Prize, and Startling the Flying Fish (2006). Her poetry books for younger readers, include Come on into […]
John Agard
John Agard Guyanese playwright, poet, and children’s writer living in Britain. He received the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2012, The BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021 and numerous prizes for his poetry, including the 1982 Casa de las Americas Prize for Pan Man. Accolades for his children’s writing include the 1997 Paul Hamlyn […]
Rupert Roopnaraine
Rupert Roopnaraine is a Guyanese writer, art critic, filmmaker, former cricketer, and political leader of the WPA. His essay collection The Sky’s Wild Noise is the winner of the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction.
Richard Drayton
Richard Drayton is a Guyana-born historian and currently Rhodes Professor of Imperial History at King’s College London. He is author of Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (Yale University Press, 2000). He was the chair of the non-fiction judges for the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize.
Malika Booker
Malika Booker is a British writer of Guyanese and Grenadian parentage. She is co-founder of Malika’s kitchen, a writer’s collective based in London, Chicago and New York. She was the first Poet in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her first collection, Pepper Seed, was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize. She won the […]
Ian McDonald
Ian McDonald, born in Trinidad and based in Guyana, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 1969, McDonald’s novel, The Hummingbird Tree was published to great acclaim and was later made into a BBC film. He has also published five collections of poetry.
Gaiutra Bahadur
Gaiutra Bahadur is a Guyanese-American essayist, critic and journalist who writes frequently about literature, history, memory, migration, and gender. Her book Coolie Woman, a personal history of indenture, was shortlisted in 2014 for the Orwell Prize, the British literary prize for artful political writing, and the OCM Bocas nonfiction prize. A former daily newspaper reporter […]
Frank Birbalsingh
Frank Birbalsingh is a Guyanese literary scholar. He has written extensively on Caribbean literature, and is professor emeritus at York University in Toronto. He is chair of the non-fiction judges for the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize.
Cyril Dabydeen
Cyril Dabydeen, born in Guyana, teaches Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa, and is a former Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1984-87). He has been a finalist four times for Canada’s Archibald Lampman Poetry Prize, as well as for the Guyana Prize, which he won for best book of fiction in 2007 (for Drums of […]
Alissa Trotz
Alissa Trotz is Professor of Caribbean Studies at New College and Director of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. She is also affiliate faculty at the Dame Nita Barrow Institute of Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados. She is editor of the anthology The […]
Grace Aneiza Ali
Grace Aneiza Ali is an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Department of Art & Public Policy at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. A curator and editor, she is the founder and editorial director of OF NOTE Magazine— an award-winning nonprofit arts journalism initiative reporting on the intersection of art and politics […]
Tessa McWatt
Tessa McWatt’s most recent book is The Snag: A Mother, a Forest, and Wild Grief, winner of the 2026 OCM Bocas Prize for Nonfiction. Her seven novels include her latest, The Snow Line, shortlisted for the 2022 Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize. Her non-fiction work includes Luminous Ink: Writers on Writing in Canada, co-edited with Dionne Brand […]
Scott Ting-A-Kee
Scott Ting-A-Kee is graduate of the University of Guyana and holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in English Literature. At 25 years of age, he has served as a teacher and assistant examiner for CAPE Literatures in English. He has a passion for reading and enjoys comparing literature of the east and west. He won The […]
Ruel Johnson
Ruel Johnson, 39, writes poetry and fiction and is currently working on a screenplay. He is a past winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature for his fiction, a winner of Small Axe prizes for his fiction and poetry. He is a fellow of the Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop (2000) and the Iowa Writers’ Program […]
Gabrielle Mohamed
Gabrielle Mohamed, a 26 -year-old Guyanese poet. In June 2017, she graduated from the University of Guyana with a Bachelor of Arts in English – Linguistics. She is passionate about Literature and Linguistics and as an emerging Creole poet, is attempting to capture the continual influence of colonial and post-colonial attitudes and behaviours within her […]
Colette Jones-Chin
Collette Jones-Chin is a graduate of the University of Guyana (UG) with a Bachelor‟s Degree (BA) in Art Education and Painting and of the Burrowes School of Art (BSA), Guyana, with a Diploma in Painting and Graphic Arts. She is as an Educator, Writer, Artist, Dramatist, Arts Therapist, Dramaturgist, Interior, Set & Costume Designer who […]
Daryll Goodchild
A love for reading and writing lead Daryll Goodchild, age 21, to keep and regularly update a journal of his childhood years. Naturally, his experiences grew with time and he started to write short stories featuring odd subjects that frequently crept into his consciousness. Daryll’s adolescent years brought with it an insatiable need for expression, […]
Ruth Osman
Ruth Osman is a Guyanese singer/songwriter, flautist and poet based in Trinidad. She is well-known for her jazz performances over the past decade with the jazz trio Jacoustik and various local and regional musicians. Her poetry collection All Made of Longing won the Guyana Prize for Best First Book of Poetry for 2023.
Luke Daniels
Luke Daniels is a social activist, counsellor and consultant on domestic violence, who was born in Guyana, is UK-based and has worked internationally. His book Pulling the Punches: Defeating Domestic Violence (2014) was the first self-help guide for perpetrators, and his 2018 book, Defeating Domestic Violence in the Americas – Men’s Work, charts the region’s history of violence, […]
Rajiv Mohabir
Rajiv Mohabir is the translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (2019) and author of The Cowherd’s Son (2017), winner of the Kundiman Prize, and The Taxidermist’s Cut (2016), winner of the Intro Prize in Poetry Four Way Books. www.rajivmohabir.com/