Gordon Rohlehr
Gordon Rohlehr, Guyana-born literary scholar long based in Trinidad, is Emeritus Professor at UWI, St. Augustine. His books include Calypso and Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad (1990), My Strangled City and Other Essays (1992), The Shape of That Hurt and Other Essays (1992), and A Scuffling of Islands: Essays on Calypso (2004), Perfected Fables Now: A […]
Angelique V. Nixon
Angelique Nixon is Senior Lecturer at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, UWI, St. Augustine. Her scholarly book Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture (University Press of Mississippi, 2015) won the Caribbean Studies Association 2016 Barbara T. Christian Award. She is author of Saltwater Healing – A Myth Memoir and Poems […]
Barbara Jenkins
The memoir, The Stranger Who Was Myself (Peepal Tree Press/2022), is the Trinidadian author’s latest book. Prizes for her short stories include The Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Caribbean Region), The Wasafiri New Writing Prize, The Canute Brodhurst Prize, The Small Axe Short Story Competition and The Hollick-Arvon Fiction Prize. Sic Transit Wagon, her debut collection […]
Arielle John
Determined to celebrate the West Indian now, while designing our shared survival of the future, Arielle John approaches poetry and theatre performance as medicine for Atlantic peoples, their resilient cultures, and the land (and sea) they occupy. The millennial’s devotion to community-building work centres on transformative justice, re-indigenized living and the healing arts as she […]
Judy Raymond
Judy Raymond, writer, journalist and editor, is a former editor in chief of the T&T Newsday and Trinidad Guardian. Her latest book is the biography Beryl McBurnie (UWI Press, 2018). Her short story “The Old Monsters” was shortlisted for the 2023 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean.
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 […]
Marlon James
Marlon James was born in Jamaica in 1970. His most recent novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, is the first novel in James’s Dark Star trilogy. His previous novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings, was the winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize, The American Book Award, and The Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize for fiction. He […]
Diana McCaulay
Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican environmental activist and writer, a lifelong resident of the capital city of Kingston. Her forthcoming novel, A House for Miss Pauline, was published by Dialogue Books in the UK and Algonquin Books in the USA in February 2025. She has already written five novels: DOG-HEART (Peepal Tree Press ) HURACAN […]
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.
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. […]
Lisa Allen-Agostini
Lisa Allen-Agostini is a writer and editor from Trinidad and Tobago. Her books include the novella Death in the Dry River (1000Volt Press, 2024); 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlisted novel The Bread the Devil Knead (Myriad, 2021), for which she also narrated the audiobook; the young adult novels Home Home (Papillote Press, 2018; Delacourte Press, 2020), […]
Colin Robinson
Colin Robinson has returned home to Trinidad and Tobago twice: from Leeds at age four, and from Brooklyn at forty-five. His debut poetry collection You Have You Father Hard Head was published in 2016.
Shivanee Ramlochan
Shivanee Ramlochan’s first book of poems, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting (Peepal Tree Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 People’s Choice T&T Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Shivanee was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize for Poetry. “The Red Thread Cycle”, […]
Earl Lovelace
Earl Lovelace is a Trinidadian writer. His books include the Caribbean classic The Dragon Can’t Dance, and Salt, winner of the 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His novel Is Just a Movie won the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the Grand Prize for Caribbean Literature from the Regional Council of Guadeloupe. He was […]
Karen Lord
Barbadian writer Dr. Karen Lord is the author, most recently, of The Blue, Beautiful World, longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Redemption in Indigo, which won the William L. Crawford Award and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her other works include […]
Barbara Lalla
Novelist Barbara Lalla is Professor Emerita, Language and Literature at The University of the West Indies, St Augustine. She is the author of five novels, including By Such a Parting Light, published in 2024. Her numerous scholarly works include Postcolonialisms: Caribbean Rereading of Medieval English Discourse, Defining Jamaican Fiction: Marronage and the Discourse of Survival, […]
Nalo Hopkinson
Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica. She lived in Jamaica, Guyana, the US and Trinidad before moving to Canada as a teenager. She has published six novels and numerous short stories. Her first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring, won the Warner Aspect First Novel contest. She has also received the Campbell and Locus Awards, […]
Bridget Brereton
Bridget Brereton is Professor Emerita of history at UWI, St. Augustine, and author of Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad and A History of Modern Trinidad, among other books. She was chair of the non-fiction judging panel for the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize in 2011, and again in 2020.
Rhoda Bharath
Rhoda Bharath is a Trinidadian writer, teacher, and political and cultural blogger. Her debut book The Ten Day’s Executive and Other Stories was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2015.
Funso Aiyejina
Funso Aiyejina is the former Deputy Festival Director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest and a former member of the board of directors of the Bocas Lit Fest. He is the former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and now Professor Emeritus. He is […]