Brandon O’Brien
Brandon O’Brien is a writer, performance poet, and teaching artist from Trinidad and Tobago. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 Alice Yard Prize for Art Writing, the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions, and the 2020 Ignyte Award for Best in Speculative Poetry, and is published in Uncanny Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange […]
Idrees Saleem
Idrees Saleem is the VERSES Bocas Poetry Slam 2014 champion and also a founding member of DMAD Company, a drama company geared toward stimulating social change.
Stephen Narain
Stephen Narain is a graduate of the MFA programme at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is at work on his first novel.
Jaime Lee Loy
Jaime Lee Loy is a contemporary artist and writer from Trinidad. Her literary fiction has been published by the St Petersburg Review, Akashic Books, NY, and Tongues of the Ocean’s Six-Word Stories. Her poetry appeared in Small Axe and was shortlisted for a prize. Her art appears on several International and local academic publications.
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is the author of the highly acclaimed novel When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton), winner of the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the overall prize. It was previously named one of the best debut novels of 2022 by the UK Observer. She is from Trinidad and Tobago and […]
Mark Raymond
Mark Raymond is an architect and educator. He worked on projects throughout Europe before returning to Trinidad in 1993. He assisted the architect Colin Laird on the design of the National Library and the Brian Lara Promenade whilst establishing his own practice. Mark has completed a wide range of architectural urban planning and design projects in Trinidad, Tobago […]
Dara Wilkinson-Bobb
Dara Wilkinson-Bobb was born in Sangre Grande and grew up in Tunapuna, Trinidad and Tobago. She teaches part-time as an Assistant Lecturer in the Writing Centre at the University of West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, and full-time at a girls’ high school. Dara has had stories published by Caribbean literary magazines and a children’s reader […]
June Aming
June Aming is a fiction writer who resides in Trinidad and Tobago. Her short stories have been included in several anthologies, and the story “Carnival Baby” was shortlisted for Small Axe competition 2014. She has previously shared her work at Carifesta X and at the Miami Book Fair 2013, 2014 and 2015. She was a […]
Glenda-Rose Nassoma Layne
Glenda-Rose Nassoma Layne is a professional storyteller and has developed a programme to interpret art through dance and poetry. In 2006 she was a Gold Medalist in the Acting World Championship of the Performing Arts, Hollywood, California and again in 2007 she won two Gold Medals, one Bronze and one industry award for Acting & Spokesmodel in […]
Basdeo Panday
Basdeo Panday was the fifth Prime Minster of Trinidad and Tobago from 1995 to 2001, and has served as Leader of the Opposition from 1976–1977, 1978–1986, 1989–1995, 2001–2006 and 2007–2010.
Hazel McShine
Hazel McShine is a Trinidadian writer, who after completing a career as a Marine Biologist, has gone on to pursue a career in writing, which was her childhood dream. She is a member of the Writers Union of Trinidad and Tobago. Her short story “The Wall” was shortlisted for the 2014 Small Axe Literary Competition
Michael Cozier
Michael Cozier, is the author of Putting Up a Resistance!, shortlisted for the 2015 Burt Award for Caribbean Literature. Set at the end of the colonial era, this Young Adult novel explores the relationship of a Trinidadian boy of East Indian descent and a Trinidadian girl of African descent living in the system of divide and rule that prevails […]
Treldon Layne
Treldon Layne is a motivational speaker, author, poet, sole composer of wise sayings, and is the CEO of Treldon’s Greetings and The Treldon Layne Foundation. To date he has published two works of poetry entitled They Stole It, I Must Replace It and Rise Up and Bolt Forward.
Vaughn T. Stanford
Vaughn T. Stanford teaches mathematics at a Trinidad secondary school. He has written and produced plays and short films which include Conflicted, performed at Little Carib Theatre in conjunction with his students, and the award-winning Lianna’s Story about a teenage drug addict for which his students won the Tambi trophy. With the assistance of the Canadian […]
Vanessa Salazar
Vanessa Salazar is a Trinidadian young adult author. Her first novel, Selima and the Merfolk, begins a three-book series. She is currently working on the second book.
Andre Bagoo
Andre Bagoo is a writer, poet, and essayist. His books include the essay collection The Undiscovered Country (Peepal Tree Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction, as well as five poetry collections, most recently Midnight Bestiaries (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). His fiction debut, The Dreaming, was published by Peepal Tree in […]
Mark Lyndersay
Mark Lyndersay is a writer, editor and photographer based in Trinidad and Tobago. He is the editor of TechNewsTT.com, an online news publication covering technology developments in Trinidad and Tobago founded in 2014 and writes BitDepth, a weekly column which has explored personal technology continuously over the last 26 years. He is the editor of the […]
Black Sage
Black Sage aka Philip Murray is a calypsonian and renowned master of Extempo singing, and four-time national Extempo champion.
Ken Ramchand
Ken Ramchand, distinguished literary critic, is the author of the seminal study The West Indian Novel and Its Background. He is Professor Emeritus of West Indian literature at the University of West Indies and a former President of the University of Trinidad and Tobago. In 2014, he received the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for his […]
Lynn Joseph
Lynn Joseph is a Trinidadian author of several books for children, including A Wave in Her Pocket, The Mermaid’s Twin Sister, An Island Christmas, Jump Up Time: A Carnival Story, and Coconut Kind of Day, and two Young Adult novels, The Color of My Words and Flowers in the Sky. She was selected as Bermuda’s […]
Lylah Persad
Lylah Persad, writer, director, actor, storyteller, is the Creative and Artistic Director of LP Entertainment Theatre. She is a preschool drama teacher and also hosts workshops for teens and adults in speech articulation and character development. Together with Penelope Spencer, she co-authored the collection Tales from the Forest.
Auntie Thea
Auntie Thea (Theodora Ulerie) is a writer and celebrated storyteller. She is the co-ordinator of Baku Productions and is the Founder/Creative Director of Culture House, a facility for developing cultural awareness among young people.
Thelma Perkins
Thelma Perkins, UK born with Trinidadian roots, retired to a life of writing and storytelling in Tobago. She writes and tells stories for children and adults. Her publications include: In Search of Mr McKenzie, The Women’s Press; a story for children, Wishing on a Wooden Spoon, Mantra Publishing and a novel, Roundabouts, Mango Publishing.
Natacha Jones
Natacha Jones has worked in the media industry for over thirty years and been in numerous stage productions and television dramas, hosting several television interviews Her work covers The Caribbean Agricultural Extension Project, MACO Caribbean Living. Natacha has immersed herself in radio and television production focusing on human interest issues especially those related to women […]
Dara E Healy
Dara E Healy, storyteller and performer, is the founder of The Idakeda Group, dedicated to impacting the lives of vulnerable young people and communities through culture, heritage and the arts. Her work has taken her throughout the country, the region and internationally.
Eintou Pearl Springer
Eintou Pearl Springer is a former Poet Laureate of Port of Spain. In her work with The Idakeda Group she explores social issues using traditional performance forms. Her publications include four collections of poetry for adults, three for children, and God Child, a collection of children’s stories.
Kevin Jared Hosein
Kevin Jared Hosein is the author, most recently, of Hungry Ghosts, fiction winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It had also been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is a two-time winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, regionally in 2015 and overall in 2018. […]
Sufia Giza Amenwahsu
Sufia Giza Amenwahsu, Poet and Historian, is an Ancestrally Inspired Artist of Gullah-Geechee descent. Co-founder of the Riverside Renaissance Writers Group, in California, and an Alumni of Cave Canem South, Writers Workshop. She performs spoken word poetry to music. She’s recorded 2 cds and has published 3 chapbooks.
Summer Edward
Summer Edward is a Gingko Prize longlisted author who writes for children and adults. Her children’s book, The Wonder of the World Leaf (HarperCollins UK/Collins Big Cat), was published on April 1, 2021. She also works as a children’s fiction editor at Heinemann, a readers’ advisory specialist at EBSCOHost Novelist, and reviews Caribbean children’s and […]
Colin Bootman
Colin Bootman, Trinidad born, New York raised, received his BFA from The School of Visual Arts in New York. Author of Young Frederick Douglass, 1994, he has illustrated and published more than twenty-five books. Recipient of many awards, he now splits his time between Trinidad and the US.