Kendel Hippolyte (born 1952) is a St Lucian poet and playwright.
Kendel Hippolyte was born in Castries, the capital of St Lucia, and was educated at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He worked as a teacher at St Mary's College in Vigie, Castries, and the Sir Arthur Lewis College at the Morne. He is actively involved as a playwright and director with the Lighthouse Theatre Company, of which he was a co-founder. [1]
He has written eight plays. His best known, Drum-maker, uses idiomatic Caribbean language to explore the indigenous local culture in a political context. He has published several collections of verse, characterized by its modernist-free style. He is also the editor of the anthologies Confluence: Nine Saint Lucian Poets (1988) and So Much Poetry in We People (1990).
In 2000, he was awarded the St. Lucia Medal of Merit (Gold) for Contribution to the Arts. In 2013, he won the poetry category of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for his 2012 poetry collection, Fault Lines. [2]
He is married to poet the Jane King.
Sir Derek Alton Walcott OM was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright. He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. 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 2010 T. S. Eliot Prize for his book of poetry White Egrets and the Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry Lifetime Recognition Award in 2015.
Edward Kamau Brathwaite, CHB, was a Barbadian poet and academic, widely considered one of the major voices in the Caribbean literary canon. Formerly a professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, Brathwaite was the 2006 International Winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, for his volume of poetry Born to Slow Horses.
Dennis Scott was a Jamaican poet, playwright, actor and dancer. His well-known poem "Marrysong" is used in the IGCSE syllabus. He was also a theatre director and drama teacher.
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.
Jane King is a St. Lucian poet, a leading West Indian writer of the generation born after World War II.
Vahni Anthony Ezekiel Capildeo is a Trinidad and Tobago-born British writer, and a member of the extended Capildeo family that has produced notable Trinidadian politicians and writers.
Anthony Joseph FRSL is a British/Trinidadian poet, novelist, musician and academic. In 2023, he was awarded the T. S. Eliot Prize for his book Sonnets for Albert.
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 is a cousin of the UK writer David Dabydeen.
Michael Arthur Gilkes was a Caribbean literary critic, dramatist, poet, filmmaker and university lecturer. He was involved in theatre for more than 40 years, as a director, actor and playwright, winning the Guyana Prize for Drama in 1992 and 2006, as well as the Guyana Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2002. He was also respected for his insight into and writings on the work of Wilson Harris.
Rupert Roopnaraine is a Guyanese cricketer, writer, and politician. Roopnaraine served as Minister of Education of Guyana between 2015 and 2017.
Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet, fiction writer, essayist and blogger. He is also a professor of creative writing.
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).
Roger Robinson is a British writer, musician and performer who lives between England and Trinidad. Best known for A Portable Paradise which won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2019.
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.
Adrian Augier is a St. Lucian poet and producer. His writings and productions center on life in St. Lucia and have been featured throughout the country, earning widespread acclaim.
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.
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.
John Robert Lee is a Saint Lucian Christian poet, writer, journalist and librarian. He has been awarded the Saint Lucia Medal of Merit (Gold) for his contribution to the development of Saint Lucian arts and culture. In 2017, his Collected Poems (1975–2015) were published by Peepal Tree Press.