Christian Campbell | |
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Born | 1979 (age 45–46) |
Education | Queen's College Secondary School; Macalester College |
Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford University Duke University |
Occupation(s) | Poet, essayist, critic |
Years active | 2010–present |
Notable work | Running the Dusk (2010) |
Awards | Aldeburgh First Collection Prize |
Christian Campbell (born 1979) is a Trinidadian-Bahamian poet, essayist, and cultural critic who has resided in the Caribbean, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. [1] As an academic, he served as an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto.
Christian Campbell was born in The Bahamas of Bahamian and Trinidadian heritage. [2] He went to Queen's College Secondary School, graduating at the age of 15, and attended Macalester College on scholarship, graduating at the age of 19. [3] He went on to earn an M.Phil. in Modern British Literature from Balliol College, Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and then an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Duke University. [4]
He was an assistant professor of English at the English department of University of Toronto, where in 2010 he invited Nobel Prize Laureate Derek Walcott. [5] Campbell's teaching and research interests comprised Caribbean Literature; Black Diaspora Literatures and Cultures; Cultural Studies/Popular Culture; Poetry/Poetics; Postcolonial Theory; Creative Writing. [6]
Campbell represented The Bahamas at the Cultural Olympiad's Poetry Parnassus in 2012 at the Southbank Centre in London. [7] [8]
In 2010, Campbell won the best first collection prize at the Aldeburgh Festival in Suffolk for his Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press, 2010). [9] Furthermore, the work was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Cave Canem Prize and the Guyana Prize for Literature. [5] Publications in which his work has been published, featured or reviewed include The New York Times , The Guardian , Small Axe , Callaloo , The Financial Times , The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, [4] and New Caribbean Poetry: An Anthology (2007, edited by Kei Miller). [10]
Of Bahamian and Trinidadian heritage, [11] Campbell has lived in the Caribbean, the US, the UK and in Canada. He describes himself as "a nomad that comes from nomads". [5]