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Jane King (born 1952) is a St. Lucian poet, a leading West Indian writer of the generation born after World War II. [1]
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Jane King (born 1952) is a St. Lucian poet, a leading West Indian writer of the generation born after World War II. [1]
Jane King was born in Castries but had a peripatetic childhood, as her family spent time in Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and Scotland during her early years. After St Joseph's Convent in St Lucia, she won a St Lucia island scholarship to study at the University of Edinburgh. Since 1976 she has taught in various institutions, including the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in Castries, where she also served as the Dean of their Division of Arts and General Studies.
King has published three collections of poems: Into the Centre (1993), Fellow Traveller (1994) and Performance Anxiety (2013).Commonwealth Writers Prize, Caribbean and Canada, and James Rodway Memorial Prize). Her poems are known for the wry wit with which they address the place of a light-skinned narrator in a race-conscious Caribbean as well as concerns over the role of the creative imagination in Caribbean societies.
She is also an actor and theatre director, co-founder of St Lucia's Lighthouse Theatre Company.
She is married to poet Kendel Hippolyte.
Sir Derek Alton Walcott was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the University of Alberta's first distinguished scholar in residence, where he taught undergraduate and graduate writing courses. He also served as Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex from 2010 to 2013. His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major achievement." In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards over the course of his career, including an Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the 2011 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015.
Jean "Binta" Breeze MBE was a Jamaican dub poet and storyteller, acknowledged as the first woman to write and perform dub poetry. She worked also as a theatre director, choreographer, actor, and teacher. She performed her work around the world, in the Caribbean, North America, Europe, South-East Asia, and Africa, and has been called "one of the most important, influential performance poets of recent years".
Lillian Allen is a Canadian dub poet, reggae musician, writer and Juno Award winner.
Sarah Flood-Beaubrun is a Saint Lucian lawyer and politician. Beaubrun is the former representative for the constituency of Castries Central in the House of Assembly. Beaubrun lost her seat in the 2021 Saint Lucian General Election dubbed a landslide victory for the Saint Lucia Labour Party.
The Culture of Saint Lucia blends the influences of African, French, and English heritage. The official language of the island is English but Kreole, a form of French patois, remains an influential secondary language. The people are predominantly Catholic but the religious climate is tolerant.
Castries District is one of 10 districts of the Caribbean island nation of Saint Lucia. According to the 2012 census, the population of the district was 80,573, having shown a slow but steady increase over the past ten years. The capital of Saint Lucia, the city of Castries, is located in this district. During the Saint Lucia Jazz Festival, the city of Castries plays host to several stages.
Kwame Senu Neville Dawes is a Ghanaian poet, actor, editor, critic, musician, and former Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. He is now Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and editor-in-chief at Prairie Schooner magazine. New York-based Poets & Writers named Dawes as a recipient of the 2011 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, which recognises writers who have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community.
Lorna Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, a leading West Indian writer of the generation born after World War II, currently dividing her time between Jamaica and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she is Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, succeeding Mervyn Morris. In 2019 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Grace Nichols FRSL is a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In December 2021, she was announced as winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
John Agard FRSL is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in Britain. In 2012, he was selected for the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He was awarded BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2021.
Levern Donaline Spencer, SLMM is a Saint Lucian high jumper. Spencer was born in Cacao Babonneau, Castries.
Kendel Hippolyte is a St Lucian poet and playwright.
Chitra Gajadin is a Surinamese author of poetry, drama and prose. Though she lives in the Netherlands and her main literary language is Dutch, her expression of joy occurs when she is reminded of her native country. Gajadin worked as a reviewer for Weekkrant Suriname, in the public libraries, and for some magazines. Her poetry delves into themes of India and Hindu culture, where she describes sensitive and penetrating observances of Hindustani who left Suriname. Her poems display nostalgia for her youth in the district of Suriname and her experiences returning to her homeland after years of absence. As an Indo-Caribbean female poet, her contemporaries are Mahadai Das, Shana Yardan, Niala Maharaj, and Asha Radjkoemar.
Sonia M. Johnny is a St. Lucian attorney who served as her country's first woman ambassador. She has served as the Chief Negotiator for the Caribbean, President of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States, Chief of the OAS Department of Trade, Tourism and Competitiveness and Deputy Director of the Summits Secretariat.
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.
Marie Grace Augustin, OBE, commonly known as Grace Augustin, was a Saint Lucian businesswoman and politician. After attaining a nursing and midwifery degree, she studied law, but was refused permission to take a bar examination based on her gender. Instead, Augustin became the first woman in Saint Lucia to manage a large estate, becoming a planter. She was the first woman to be nominated as a parliamentarian in St. Lucia and become the first female member of the legislature.
Sassy Ross is a poet. Born in Saint Lucia, she lives in New York City.
Petronilla Deterville, MBE was a St. Lucian musician and composer recognized for her work in founding youth music and theatrical groups. She was honored as a member of the Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the development and preservation of St. Lucia's folk music, as well as her efforts to utilize the arts to expand educational opportunities.
Patricia G. Turnbull is a poet from Saint Lucia. In 1991, she was awarded the Cedars Prize for Contemporary Poetry.
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