Barbara Jenkins | |
|---|---|
 Jenkins at the British Library in 2022 | |
| Born | |
| Alma mater | |
| Children | 3 |
| Awards | Commonwealth Short Story Prize; Guyana Prize for Caribbean Literature |
Barbara Jenkins is a Trinidadian writer, whose work since 2010 has won several international prizes, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Wasafiri New Writing Prize.
Barbara Jenkins was born in San Fernando, Trinidad. She studied at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and at University College, Cardiff. She married a fellow student, and during the 1960s lived in Wales, returning to Trinidad in the early 1970s. [1] She has described her successful writing career as "accidental": after she retired as a secondary school geography teacher, she joined a writers group in 2007 at the urging of a friend, and subsequently was accepted on the workshop for regional writers hosted by the Cropper Foundation. [2] Jenkins went on to take the Master's of Fine Arts (MFA) creative writing programme at the University of the West Indies at St Augustine, [3] graduating in 2012 with high commendation. [2] [4] Her MFA thesis formed the basis for her debut book, Sic Transit Wagon. [2] [5]
Her short stories have been published in journals including Wasafiri , The Caribbean Writer and Small Axe , as well as in the collections Moving Right Along: Caribbean Stories in Honour of John Cropper, eds Funso Aiyejina and Judy Stone (Caroni, Trinidad: Lexicon, 2010), Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean (New York and Leeds: Peekash Press, 2014), Trinidad Noir: The Classics, ed. Robert Antoni (Akashic Books, 2017), [6] and New Daughters of Africa , ed. Margaret Busby (London: Myriad Editions, 2019). [7]
Her work won several international prizes: the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Caribbean Region) in 2010 (for "Something from Nothing") and 2011 (for "Head Not Made for Hat Alone"), [8] the Wasafiri New Writing Prize; the Canute Brodhurst Prize for short fiction from The Caribbean Writer; the Small Axe short story competition [9] in 2011; the Romance Category, My African Diaspora Short Story Contest; and the inaugural Caribbean Communications Network (CCN) Prize for a film review of the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, 2012. [1]
In 2013 she won the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest's Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize (now known as the Emerging Caribbean Writers Prize, jointly administered with the Arvon Foundation), an award given to allow a Caribbean writer living and working in the Caribbean to devote time to developing or finishing a literary work, with support from an established writer as mentor. [10] Award-winning British writer Bernardine Evaristo subsequently mentored Jenkins. [11]
Her debut collection of short stories, Sic Transit Wagon and Other Stories, was published in 2013 by Peepal Tree Press, and in 2015 was awarded the 2014 Guyana Prize for Caribbean Literature for the best book of fiction. [12] [13] She won the Bloody Scotland-Bocas Lit Fest Crime Writing Prize in 2014. [14] [6]
Jenkins was in 2015 the inaugural British Council International Writer in Residence at the Small Wonder Short Story Festival at Charleston in East Sussex. [11] [15]
An excerpt from her then novel-in-progress, De Rightest Place, appeared in The Caribbean Review of Books in October 2015. [16] Published in 2018 by Peepal Tree Press, De Rightest Place – likened in setting to a Trinidadian Cheers – has been described as "a novel with a great deal of heart. It's a funny, moving and ultimately uplifting story". [17] In 2019, Jenkins was shortlisted for the inaugural RSL Christopher Bland Prize, set up by the Royal Society of Literature to encourage and celebrate older writers first published at the age of 50 or over. [18] [19]
Earl Wilbert Lovelace is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer. He is particularly recognized for his descriptive, dramatic fiction on Trinidadian culture: "Using Trinidadian dialect patterns and standard English, he probes the paradoxes often inherent in social change as well as the clash between rural and urban cultures." As Bernardine Evaristo notes, "Lovelace is unusual among celebrated Caribbean writers in that he has always lived in Trinidad. Most writers leave to find support for their literary endeavours elsewhere and this, arguably, shapes the literature, especially after long periods of exile. But Lovelace's fiction is deeply embedded in Trinidadian society and is written from the perspective of one whose ties to his homeland have never been broken."
Lawrence Scott FRSL is a novelist and short-story writer from Trinidad and Tobago, who divides his time between London and Port of Spain. He has also worked as a teacher of English and Drama at schools in London and in Trinidad. Scott's novels have been awarded (1998) and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and thrice nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award. His stories have been much anthologised and he won the Tom-Gallon Short-Story Award in 1986.
Cyril Dabydeen is a Guyana-born Canadian writer of Indian descent. He grew up in Rose Hall sugar plantation with the sense of Indian indenture rooted in his family background. He's a cousin of the UK writer David Dabydeen.
Funso Aiyejina is a Nigerian poet, short story writer, playwright and academic. He is the former Dean of Humanities and Education and current Professor Emeritus at the University of the West Indies. His collection of short fiction, The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories, won the 2000 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best First Book (Africa).
Monique Roffey is a Trinidadian-born British writer and memoirist. Her novels have been much acclaimed, winning awards including the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, for Archipelago, and the Costa Book of the Year award, for The Mermaid of Black Conch in 2021.
Marina Salandy-Brown FRSA, Hon. FRSL, is a Trinidadian journalist, broadcaster and cultural activist. She was formerly an editor and Senior Manager in Radio and News and Current Affairs programmes with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London, one of the BBC's few top executives from an ethnic minority background. She is the founder and inaugural director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, held annually in Trinidad and Tobago since 2011, "the biggest literary festival in the Anglophone Caribbean", and of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She was also co-founder of the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize.
The NGC Bocas Lit Fest is the Trinidad and Tobago literary festival that takes place annually during the last weekend of April in Port of Spain. Inaugurated in 2011, it is the first major literary festival in the southern Caribbean and largest literary festival in the Anglophone Caribbean. A registered non-profit company, the festival has as its title sponsor the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago (NGC). Other sponsors and partners include First Citizens Bank, One Caribbean Media (OCM), who sponsor the associated OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, CODE, and the Commonwealth Foundation.
Jacob Ross FRSL is a Grenada-born poet, playwright, journalist, novelist and creative writing tutor, based in the UK since 1984.
Jennifer Rahim was a Trinidadian fiction writer, poet and literary critic.
Vladimir Lucien is a writer, critic and actor from St. Lucia. His first collection of poetry, Sounding Ground (2014), won the Caribbean region's major literary prize for anglophone literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, making Lucien the youngest ever winner of the prize.
Jacqueline Bishop is a writer, visual artist and photographer from Jamaica, who now lives in New York City, where she is a professor at the School of Liberal Studies at New York University (NYU). She is the founder of Calabash, an online journal of Caribbean art and letters, housed at NYU, and also writes for the Huffington Post and the Jamaica Observer Arts Magazine. In 2016 her book The Gymnast and Other Positions won the nonfiction category of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Nicholas Laughlin is a writer and editor from Trinidad and Tobago. He has been editor of The Caribbean Review of Books since 2004, and also edits the arts and travel magazine Caribbean Beat. He is the festival and programme director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, having worked alongside founder and managing director Marina Salandy-Brown since 2011.
Susheila Nasta, MBE, Hon. FRSL, is a British critic, editor, academic and literary activist. She is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at Queen Mary University of London, and founding editor of Wasafiri, the UK's leading magazine for international contemporary writing. She is a recipient of the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature.
Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw is a Trinidadian writer and academic, who is Professor of French Literature and Creative Writing at the University of the West Indies. Her writing encompasses both scholarly and creative work, and she has also co-edited several books. Walcott-Hackshaw is the daughter of Nobel Prize laureate Derek Walcott.
Lisa Allen-Agostini is a Trinidadian journalist, editor and writer of fiction, poetry and drama. She is also a stand-up comedian, performing as "Just Lisa".
Kevin Jared Hosein is a Caribbean novelist and short-story writer from Trinidad and Tobago. He is known for winning the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize with his story "Passage". He also won the regional (Caribbean) section of the prize in 2015, with "The King of Settlement 4".
Sharon Millar is a Trinidadian writer. She was awarded the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2013 for "The Whale House".
Shivanee Ramlochan is a Trinidadian poet, arts reporter and blogger. Her first collection of poems Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting was shortlisted for the 2018 Felix Dennis Prize for best first collection.
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a Trinidadian writer. She was awarded the second prize for "Public Notice" in the 2016 Small Axe Literary Competition. Her debut novel When We Were Birds was released in 2022 and won the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.
Jane Bryce is a British writer, journalist, literary and cultural critic, as well as an academic. She was born and raised in Tanzania, has lived in Italy, the UK and Nigeria, and since 1992 has been based in Barbados. Her writing for a wide range of publications has focused on contemporary African and Caribbean fiction, postcolonial cinema and creative writing, and she is Professor Emerita of African Literature and Cinema at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.