Abigail Parry
Abigail Parry spent several years as a toymaker, and now works full-time as a writer, tutor and translator. She is currently translating Cuban poet Legna Rodriguez Iglesias, and working on a stage production with physical theatre company Frantic Assembly. Her first collection, Jinx, was shortlisted for the 2018 Felix Dennis Forward Prize for Best First Collection
Jeanelle Frontin
Jeanelle Frontin is the author of The YaraStar Trilogy for young adults. Book one in the trilogy, The Unmarked Girl, is the winner of the 2019 CODE Burt Award for Caribbean YA Literature and is listed as one of the 5 best Middle-Grade and YA Indie Books of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews. Jeanelle is the Founder […]
Raymond Ramcharitar
Raymond Ramcharitar is a writer, a journalist, and a cultural critic from Trinidad. He is the author of a controversial study of the Trinidadian media, Breaking the News: Media and Culture in Trinidad, the short story collection The Island Quintet, and the poetry collections American Fall and Here.
Lucy Hannah
Lucy Hannah is a writer and producer. She founded Commonwealth Writers in 2011 and co-founded BBC Writersroom in the 1990s. She has worked for a range of international organisations to initiate and establish creative projects, mostly in areas of conflict and post conflict.
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.
Stella Chong Sing
Stella Chong Sing is an educator and emerging writer from Port-of- Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Her research interests include existential literature, postcolonial literature, feminist studies, and Indian- Caribbean history and identity. She currently teaches communication studies and English language and literature in Trinidad and Tobago. Some of her poems were included in Brock University’s literary […]
Patti-Anne Ali
Patti-Anne Ali has written, directed and performed for page, stage and screen for more than twenty years. Writings include: Ian Ali – Great Nationals of Trinidad and Tobago Series (2013) and the Cacique (Trinidadian theatrical excellence award) nominated play, Single- An Act of Love (2004). Performances include: C. Durang’s Miss Witherspoon (2007) with Amphibian Stage, […]
Brian London
Brian London, born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, is the reigning National Extempo Monarch. He started his calypso career in the Junior Calypso competition, and has several social and political commentary wins under his belt.
Nigel Campbell
Nigel Campbell is a well-known music industry analyst, commentator and reviewer who has documented Caribbean music culture and the business of music in print, television, and on the popular podcast Music Matters: The Caribbean Edition with entertainment journalist Laura Dowrich-Phillips (podcast.iradio.tt). His writing has appeared in the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, Caribbean Beat and other […]
Emma D’Costa
Emma D’Costa works with the Commonwealth Foundation, managing a range of events and projects. In her current role she oversees the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and manages Commonwealth Writers’ translation initiatives. Emma’s previous work with the Commonwealth Institute and London-based arts organisation Cultural Co-operation spans various world cultures projects and international exhibitions.
Derry Sandy
Trinidadian Derry Sandy is a New York attorney (and a NSCA certified personal trainer when he is not lawyering, writing or riding his road bike). His debut novel Greyborn Rising is his attempt to share Trinidad’s rich oral traditions with a broader audience.
Miscellaneous Authors
Alake Pilgrim
Alake Pilgrim is the author of Zo And The Forest Of Secrets (2022, shortlisted for the Bocas Lit Fest Children’s Book Prize) and the sequel Zo and the Invisible Island (2024), fantasy adventures for 9+ readers set in nature on the island of Trinidad. Her stories have appeared in Small Axe, the Center for Fiction, […]
Gary Hector
Gary Hector is the founder of the T&T rock and roll band jointpop, which has released several successful albums with an eclectic mix of various styles of pop music.
Sharda Patasar
Sharda Patasar is a cultural researcher, arts and culture columnist for the T&T Newsday, and a sitar player of classical North Indian, fusion, and experimental music.
Christine Norton
Christine Norton is a photographer and one of the Directors of The Noel Norton Collection Limited, managing the care and development of the Noel Norton database of photography. She searched the Noel Norton Collection to curate the upcoming publication, Minshall by Norton.
Anthony Wall
Anthony Wall has directed Arena films since 1978 and was series editor from 1985 until standing down last year to become the Creative Advisor, the Arena Archive. Described by Martin Scorsese as “home to some of the greatest non-fiction film making of the last 40 years”, Arena is the world’s longest running arts documentary strand. […]
Sharlan Bailey
Sharlan Bailey is a musician, composer/songwriter, producer, and performer who has been gracing the stage professionally since 2003 as a solo act. Sharlan is a descendant of calypso royalty, being the younger son of deceased Dr. Winston “The Shadow” Bailey. Sharlan’s early exposure to the stage began as a back-ground singer providing chorus and writing […]
Heather Cateau
Dr. Heather Cateau specialises in the study of plantation systems and in comparative systems of enslavement. She teaches courses in the areas of Caribbean history, economic history, and Caribbean historiography. She is working on “Voices of the Past,” a novel oral history project which seeks to capture historical experiences before they are lost. She has […]
Hon. Mr. Justice Adrian Saunders
Hon. Mr. Justice Adrian Saunders, a native of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill) in 1975 and a Legal Education Certificate from the Hugh Wooding Law School in Trinidad & Tobago in 1977. He began his legal career as a barrister […]
Nick Makoha
Nick Makoha is a London-based Ugandan poet and playwright and founder of Obsidian. Winner of the Ivan Juritz Prize 2021, his debut Kingdom of Gravity was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Prize and nominated by The Guardian as one of the best books of 2017. A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and Complete Works Alumni, he […]
Luke Neima
Luke Neima is the online editor and digital director of Granta magazine, where he commissions long-form reportage, memoir and fiction for Granta.com as well as for the print magazine. His reviewing, fiction and translations have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Prospect Magazine and the White Review. He is also the writer of the documentary […]
Caryl Phillips
Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts. He is the author of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction. A recipient of a 2013 Anthony Sabga Award for Caribbean Excellence, his awards include the PEN Open Book Award, the Commonwealth Literature Prize, the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black […]
Yuri Herrera
Yuri Herrera (Actopan, México, 1970) has written three novels, all of them translated into several languages: Kingdom Cons, Signs Preceding the End of the World, and Transmigration of Bodies; which have been published in English by And Other Stories. In 2016 he shared with translator Lisa Dillman the Best Translated Book Award for the translation of Signs Preceding […]
Selwyn R. Cudjoe
Selwyn R. Cudjoe is a professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. He attended Fordham, Columbia and Cornell universities. He has taught at Fordham, Cornell, Ohio and Harvard universities. He has also written for the New York Times, The Washington Post, the New Left Review and the Trinidad Express where he is a weekly […]
Ian Randle
Ian Randle, O.D., B.A. (Hons); MSc, LL.D. (Hon), recipient of the 2019 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award, is Chairman of Ian Randle Publishers Limited, which he founded in 1990, now recognized regionally and internationally as one of the leading publishers of books on and about the Caribbean. Ian Randle has over 45 years experience as a […]
Danez Smith
Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a National Book Award Finalist. Their previous poetry collection [insert] Boy (2014) won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award.
Diana Evans
Diana Evans is an award-winning British author of Nigerian and English descent. She has written three novels, the most recent of which, Ordinary People, was nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in fiction. Her first novel, 26a, won the inaugural Orange Award for New Writers. She lives in London.
Margaret Busby
Margaret Busby CBE, Hon. FRSL, editor, broadcaster and writer, was born in Ghana and educated in the UK. She became Britain’s youngest and first black woman publisher when in 1967 she co-founded Allison & Busby, of which she was editorial director for 20 years. She edited the pioneering anthology Daughters of Africa (1992), and 2019’s follow-up, […]
Krystal A. Sital
Born in the republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Krystal A. Sital is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Secrets We Kept: Three Women of Trinidad. A PEN award finalist, her work has appeared in Elle Magazine, The New York Times, Salon, Today’s Parent, Catapult, The Caribbean Writer, and elsewhere.