3canal
3canal is a Trinidadian band and leading proponent of rapso, a musical style which combines elements of calypso, soca and rap. The group was formed in 1994 by Visual Artist Steve Ouditt and Performing Artists Wendell Manwarren and Roger Roberts. For the next 3 years they created and led their own Jouvay Band in the Trinidad Carnival. Jouvay is the pre-dawn ritual street procession which marks the opening of the Trinidad Carnival. In 1997 3canal expanded to include Stanton Kewley and John Isaacs, they recorded their first song Blue, the theme song for their Jouvay Band that year. Since then 3canal has released numerous albums from the late 1990s to the present, including a greatest hits collection that includes songs from 1997 to 2004. 3canal celebrated its 25th anniversary as a musical entity in 2022.
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, and in international anthologies such as New Daughters of Africa (ed. Margaret Busby).
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s most recent book Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde was named a Publisher’s Weekly top ten book of 2024. She is also the author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, M Archive: After the End of the World, and Dub: Finding Ceremony. She is a winner of the Windham-Campbell prize in poetry and the Whiting Award in non-fiction. Alexis is a proud queer Black feminist love evangelist. The Anguilla Literary Festival called Alexis “the pride of Anguilla.” She lives in Durham, North Carolina.
Alisa Gomez
Alisa Gomez is the author of two self-published children’s stories that feature the wildlife of Trinidad’s forests and she is at work on others, which aim to bring the tropical ecosystem to life for young people.
Alycia Pirmohamed
Alycia Pirmohamed is the author of the poetry collection Another Way to Split Water (Polygon Books and YesYes Books), and her nonfiction debut A Beautiful and Vital Place won the 2023 Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing and is forthcoming with Canongate. Alycia currently teaches on the Creative Writing master’s at the University of Cambridge, and she is the co-founder of the Scottish BPOC Writers Network and a co-organiser of the Ledbury Poetry Critics. She is the recipient of several awards including a Pushcart Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize, and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.
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 2022.
Andrea Jacob
Andrea Jacob, a medical social worker, and educator, resides in Trinidad. Her early life was impacted by her Christian upbringing, resulting in her having a passion for truth and equality. Her life’s journey took a turn when she came into contact with the revolutionary ideologies of the late 1960s and 80s. This caused her to leave the classroom to join other brave young persons engaged in armed struggle against the state. Following her subsequent imprisonment, she successfully pursued a Master of Social Work degree. From Freedom Fighter to True Liberation is her memoir.
Anthony Joseph
Anthony Joseph is an award-winning Trinidad-born poet, novelist, academic, and musician. His latest poetry collection, Sonnets for Albert, was the winner of the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry. It previously won the 2022 T.S. Eliot Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection. He is the author of four other poetry collections and three novels. His 2018 novel Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize and the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore Award, and longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. In 2019, he was awarded a Jerwood Compton Poetry Fellowship. As a musician, he has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and in 2020 received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Composers Award. His most recent album, The Rich Are Only Defeated When Running For Their Lives, was released in May 2021. He lectures in Creative Writing at Kings College, London.
Anthony Vahni Capildeo
Anthony V. Capildeo FRSL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Currently Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of York, their site-specific word and visual art includes responses to Cornwall’s former capital, Launceston, as the Causley Trust Poet in Residence (2022) and to the Ubatuba granite of the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds (2023), as well as to Scottish, Irish, and Caribbean built and natural environments. Their numerous books and pamphlets, from No Traveller Returns (Salt, 2003), Person Animal Figure (Landfill, 2005) onwards, are distinguished by deliberate engagement with independent and small presses. Their work has been recognized with the Cholmondeley Award (Society of Authors) and the Forward Poetry Prize for Best Collection. Their most recent book is Polkadot Wounds (Carcanet, 2024). Their interests include silence, translation theory, medieval reworkings, plurilingualism, collaborative work, and traditional masquerade. Recent commissions include research-based Windrush poems for Poet in the City and for the Royal Society of Literature. They are the winner of a 2025 Windham-Campbell Prize.
Antonio Michael Downing
Antonio Michael Downing spends his time writing books, singing songs and trying to make his Grandma proud. The 2018 Taylor Prize named him one of Canada’s best emerging authors. His acclaimed memoir SAGA BOY was called by Giller winner Ian Williams “the triumph of Blackness everywhere…” STARS IN MY CROWN is his first children’s book. BLACK CHEROKEE — his debut novel — will be released in North America by Simon and Schuster in 2025. He writes and performs music as John Orpheus.
Anu Lakhan
Anu Lakhan is a writer and editorial triage consultant. She writes about books and food. She facilitated a writing course at UWI, St Augustine for eight years. Her books include Letters to K (Argotiers Press, 2018) and The Proper Care of Knives (Argotiers Press, 2025)
Ayana K. S. L. John
Ayana Kalifa Sarafina Latifah John is from St. Barb’s Laventille, Trinidad and Tobago. Her passion for writing started at the tender age of eight when she began writing short stories, poems and songs. At the age of twelve she got the inspiration to write her very first book and two-part series, called Love & Drama. On Saturday 30th November 2024, she published ten books at once, also known as the ‘Epic Ten’. These books encapsulate all the tenets of good drama: love, suspense, climax, disappointment, relationships, faith and hope. In writing these books she hopes to provide stories that readers can identify with; to highlight that despite our many differences we all have similar trials and tribulations which we can overcome through love and faith, and most importantly, it’s always good to have a good ol’ laugh.
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 and fiction have appeared in Callaloo, The Hampden-Sydney Review, The Caribbean Writer (for which he received a Daily News Prize for Poetry), and many other publications. A veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces, Semple holds an M.A. and an M.L.S. from Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY), as well as an M.Phil, from Long Island University (LIU), where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate. From 2010 to 2022, he wrote audiobook reviews for Sound Commentary Journal. He serves on the editorial board of The Caribbean Writer and is an editor and book reviewer for Caribbean Voice. Semple is a Young Adult librarian and currently works for the Queens Public Library system in New York City.
Bilqees Mohammed
Bilqees Mohammed graduated from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and French in 2023 with First Class Honours. She is currently pursuing postgraduate training in Spanish-English interpreting at York University in Toronto. Bilqees was also shortlisted as a Rhodes Finalist for the 2024 Commonwealth Caribbean Rhodes Scholarship.
Black Sage
Black Sage aka Philip Murray is a calypsonian and renowned master of Extempo singing, and four-time national Extempo champion.
Breanne McIvor
Brendon Alekseii
Brendon Alekseii is a Trinbagonian writer, director, performer, and teaching artist. He uses the performing arts as a tool for engendering compassion and examining ranges of Caribbeanness. As a spoken word poet, he has been a five-time finalist of the First Citizens National Poetry Slam (previously the Verses Bocas Poetry Slam). He also served as a coach for the Roots Foundation’s TCT Youth Poetry Team at the 2019 Brave New Voices Poetry Festival. A 2018 Resident of the Cropper Foundation Residential Writers’ Retreat, his writing has been featured in CULTUREGO, Into The Void, and The Pitkin Review. He lives in Trinidad with his more talented spouse and five cats.
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.
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.
Camille Hernández-Ramdwar
Camille Hernández-Ramdwar is a Trinidadian-Canadian author and scholar. Her debut collection of short stories Suite as Sugar was published by Dundurn Press in 2023. Camille’s earlier work appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction; Mercury Retrograde; and “but where are you really from?” Stories of Identity and Assimilation in Canada. She has been shortlisted for the Otherwise Award and received numerous literary grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Shevchenko Foundation for her two upcoming novels. Camille is Professor Emerita at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she headed the Caribbean Studies programme for almost twenty years. She left academia in 2022 to write full-time.
Caroline Mackenzie
Caroline Mackenzie is a Trinidadian writer whose short fiction has appeared in publications around the world. In 2017 she was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and she won first prize for fiction in the 2019 Small Axe Literary Competition. Her debut novel One Year of Ugly was released in May 2020.
Catherine Lord
Born in Roseau, Dominica, Catherine Lord, Professor Emerita of Studio Art at the University of California, Irvine, is a writer, artist, and curator whose work addresses issues of queer utopias and colonialism. She is the author of The Summer of Her Baldness: A Cancer Improvisation (2004) and The Effect of Tropical Light on White Men (2023), as well as Art and Queer Culture (2013). She has been shown at Site Santa Fe, La Mama Gallery, Post Gallery, Thomas Jancar Gallery, Callicoon Gallery, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives, the Carpenter Center, and the Dorsky Museum. She divides her time between Hudson, NY, and Manhattan.
Celeste Mohammed
Celeste Mohammed is a Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer. Her debut novel-in-stories Pleasantview (Jacaranda, 2021) won the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2022 CLMP Firecracker Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the UK Society of Authors McKitterick Prize, and her debut non-fiction book A Different Energy: Women in Caribbean Oil was published in 2023. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts and she received a 2018 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.
Christina Cooke
Named a “Writer to Watch” by CBC Books and Shondaland, Christina Cooke is the author of Broughtupsy – named a “Best Book of 2024” by Elle, Electric Literature, CBC Books, and Debutiful, in addition to being named a must-read title by over 30 outlets including Vogue, The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, and Kobo. A MacDowell fellow and Journey Prize winner, she holds a Master of Arts from the University of New Brunswick, a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has been named the inaugural Poets & Writers Fellow at Vermont Studio Center. Her short fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The Caribbean Writer, PRISM international, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, LitHub, and others. Born in Jamaica, Christina is now a Canadian citizen who lives and writes in New York City.
Cindy Allman
Cindy Allman is a Jamaican living and working in Trinidad and Tobago. She is a book blogger, book reviewer, book club host, content creator, and a very active member of the Bookstagram community. She freelances full time as a digital marketer and spends half the year being a digital nomad. Cindy is also the creator of #ReadCaribbean month which takes place in June. Her mission is to get people to read, read more, read widely and read Caribbean.
Debbie Jacob
Debbie Jacob is an award-winning journalist, author, librarian, and prison reform activist, whose career spans over three decades and books such as Wishing for Wings and Making Waves: How the West Indies Shaped the United States.
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 as several essays from current research on the representation of servants in postcolonial women’s writing. She is co-editor for Palgrave’s Contemporary Women’s Writing series and co-editor of the journal Women: A Cultural Review.
Diana McCaulay
Diana McCaulay is an award-winning Jamaican writer and environmental activist. Her latest novel, Daylight Come, is published in September 2020 by Peepal Tree Press, and was a finalist for the 2019 CODE Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature. She has written four earlier novels, White Liver Gal (self-published), Gone to Drift (Harper Collins; Papillote Press), Huracan (Peepal Tree Press) and Dog-Heart (Peepal Tree Press). Both Dog-Heart and Huracan were shortlisted for the Saroyan Prize for International Writing. Gone to Drift placed second in the 2015 CODE Burt Award and won the Vic Reid Award for Young Adult Literature at Jamaica’s national Lignum Vitae Awards in 2016. Diana also won the Hollick Arvon Prize for Caribbean writing in 2014, for her non fiction work-in-progress Loving Jamaica: a memoir of place and (not) belonging. She was the Caribbean regional winner for the Commonwealth Writers Short Story prize in 2012 for her story The Dolphin Catcher. She has also written children’s stories for SCOOP magazine in the UK.
Dr Afiya Gaspard
Dr. Afiya Gaspard is a medical doctor who also has a BSc. in Human Nutrition and Dietetics. She studied at University of the West Indies Mona and St.Augustine campuses. She has worked in a number of industries gaining a wealth of knowledge and expertise. She works at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in the Pediatric department. Dr. Gaspard has been writing for many years, she originally had a lifestyle blog but recently decided to dabble in writing books for children as a means to combine her love for children and science. She is the author of Meet the World Inside of You, an educational children’s book with a twist. Dr. Gaspard describes it as a little book with a big personality. Her goal is to make learning about your body cute and fun and to encourage children to be more inquisitive.
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 of storytelling. In 2017, she won the Guyana Press Association’s award for Best Feature in Print. Dreylan was the former co-curator of The Writers’ Room, a weekly column once published in the Stabroek News, featuring the work of Guyanese creative writers. She now curates cultural mobility opportunities for Caribbean creatives via The Culture Junction on Instagram. While she has recently taken a liking to the personal essay form, she is a poet first and always, and this affinity is evident throughout her portfolio of work.