Merle Collins | |
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| Born | 29 September 1950  Aruba |
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| Occupation | Poet, performing artist, novelist, prose writer, artist, university teacher |
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Merle Collins (born 29 September 1950 in Aruba) [1] is a Grenadian poet, novelist and short-story writer.
Collins' parents are from Grenada, where they returned from Aruba shortly after her birth. Her primary education was in St George's, Grenada. She later studied at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, earning degrees in English and Spanish in 1972. [2] She then taught history and Spanish in Grenada for two years and subsequently in St Lucia. In 1980, she graduated from Georgetown University, Washington, DC, with a master's degree in Latin American Studies. She graduated from the London School of Economics with a Ph.D. in Government.
Collins was deeply involved in the Grenadian Revolution and served as a government coordinator for research on Latin America and the Caribbean. She left Grenada for England in 1983. [3] [1]
From 1984 to 1995, Collins taught at the University of North London. She is currently a Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Maryland, [4] where she was selected as 2018–2019 Distinguished Scholar Teacher. [5]
Her critical works include "Themes and Trends in Caribbean Writing Today" in From My Guy to Sci-Fi: Genre and Women's Writing in the Postmodern World (ed. Helen Carr, Pandora Press, 1989), and "To be Free is Very Sweet" in Slavery and Abolition (Vol. 15, issue 3, 1994, pp. 96–103).
Her first collection of poetry, Because the Dawn Breaks, was published by Karia Press in London in 1985, at which time Collins was a member of African Dawn, a performance group combining poetry, mime, and African music. [3]
In England, she began her first novel, Angel, which was published in 1987. Angel follows the lives of Grenadians as they struggled for independence, and is specifically about a young woman going through the political turbulence in Grenada at the time.
Her collection of short stories, Rain Darling, was produced in 1990, and a second collection of poetry, Rotten Pomerack, in 1992. The poems in this collection explore experiences of Caribbean immigrants in England. [6] Her second novel, The Colour of Forgetting, was published in 1995. A review of her 2003 poetry collection, Lady in a Boat, states: "Ranging from poems reveling in the nation language of her island to poems that capture the beauty of its flora, Collins presents her island and people going about the business of living. They attempt to come to terms with the past and construct a future emerging out of the crucible of violence. Lady in a Boat is a poignant retelling of a period in history when, for a brief moment, Caribbean ascendancy seemed possible. Merle Collins shows how the death of this moment continues to haunt the Caribbean imagination." [7] Her most recent collection of stories, The Ladies Are Upstairs, was published in 2011.
Her 2023 novel, Ocean Stirrings (subtitled "A Work of Fiction in Tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Working Mother and Activist, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings"), was shortlisted for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. [8] Alexandra Harris, Chair of the judges, stated: "Collins fuses history and invention with utmost care and creativity. ... With a deep sense of purpose and not a hint of literary showiness, Collins brings together many voices, from eighteenth-century English letter-writers to Black rights orators, and she honours the rich Grenadian creole, now largely lost, with a new life here on the page." [9] The review by Shivanee Ramlochan in Caribbean Beat concluded: "Above all, this is a richly empathetic rendering in fiction of a real-life person whose story remained almost entirely unsung. Ocean Stirrings anchors her history before us, asking whose voices are allowed to resound." [10]
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.
John Joseph Maria Figueroa was a Jamaican poet and educator. He played a significant role in the development of Anglophone Caribbean literature both as a poet and an anthologist. He contributed to the development of the University College of the West Indies as an early member of staff, and had a parallel career as a broadcaster, working for various media organizations including the BBC. He also taught in Jamaica, Britain, the United States, Nigeria and Puerto Rico.
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Wayne Vincent Brown was a columnist, poet and fiction writer, and a teacher and mentor to numerous Caribbean writers.
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Tiphanie Yanique from Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, is a Caribbean American fiction writer, poet and essayist who lives in New York. In 2010 the National Book Foundation named her a "5 Under 35" honoree. She also teaches creative writing, currently based at Emory University.
Jacob Ross FRSL is a Grenada-born poet, playwright, journalist, novelist and creative writing tutor, based in the UK since 1984.
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Elean Roslyn Thomas was a Jamaican poet, novelist, journalist and activist. She was active in the struggle for women's rights in the Caribbean and the movement for Jamaican national independence, as well as working in Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe and Africa. She was married (1988–1998) to human rights barrister Anthony Gifford.
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.
Marcia Douglas is a novelist, poet, and performer.
Curdella Forbes is a Jamaican academic and critically acclaimed author – winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction for A Tall History of Sugar.
Hazel Campbell was a Jamaican writer, notably of short stories and children's books, who was also a teacher, editor and public relations worker.
Jean Buffong is a Grenadian-British novelist and poet.
Tanya Shirley is a Jamaican poet.
Heather Hope Royes is a Jamaican media consultant, HIV/AIDS consultant and poet.
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