N. D. Williams | |
---|---|
Born | 1942 (age 79–80) Guyana |
Nationality | Guyanese |
Alma mater | University of the West Indies |
N. D. "Wyck" Williams (born 1942 in Guyana) is a New York-based writer.
Born in Guyana, Williams went to Jamaica as a student to study at University of the West Indies at Mona in 1968. As a student he witnessed the riots following student demonstrations against the banning of the late Dr. Walter Rodney. This is now referred to as the Rodney riots, 1968. Williams writes of being powerfully influenced by the radical, nativist currents in Jamaican culture – reggae and yard theatre – of this period. His stories have been published in Jamaica Journal and Savacou , and in the anthologies One People's Grief (1983) and Best West Indian Stories. [1]
In 1976 his first novel Ikael Torass was awarded the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize. [2] It draws on his experiences in Jamaica and particularly the Rodney episode. He also explores the role of the university and education as an agent of social division, as well as the revolt on campus and in the wider society against the repressive forces in Jamaican society.
Williams lived for a time in Antigua, before moving to the U.S., where he lives in New York City. His works, from the short stories of The Crying of Rainbirds (1992), the novel, The Silence of Islands (1994), the two novellas My Planet of Ras and What Happening There, Prash in Prash and Ras (1997), to the short stories in Julie Mango (2003), all published by Peepal Tree Press, explore both an island and a diasporic experience. [3]
In 2002 Williams published his searching look at the teeming underclass of New York in his disturbing novel Ah, Mikhail, O Fidel. [4]
Two other collection of short stories followed: Colonial Cream in January 2003 and The Friendship of Shoes (November 2005).
Walter Anthony Rodney was a prominent Guyanese historian, political activist and academic. He was assassinated in 1980.
Guyanese literature covers works including novels, poetry, plays and others written by people born or strongly-affiliated with Guyana. Formerly British Guiana, British language and style has an enduring impact on the writings from Guyana, which are done in English language and utilizing Guyanese Creole. Emigration has contributed to a large body of work relating the Guyanese diaspora experience.
Fred D'Aguiar is a British-Guyanese poet, novelist, and playwright. He is currently Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
Ian McDonald is a Caribbean-born poet and writer who describes himself as "Antiguan by ancestry, Trinidadian by birth, Guyanese by adoption, and West Indian by conviction." His ancestry on his father's side is Antiguan and Kittitian, and Trinidadian on his mother’s side. His only novel, The Humming-Bird Tree, first published in 1969, is considered a classic of Caribbean literature.
David Dabydeen is a Guyanese-born broadcaster, novelist, poet and academic. He was formerly Guyana's Ambassador to UNESCO from 1997 to 2010 and the youngest Member of the UNESCO Executive Board (1993–1997), elected by the General Council of all Member States of UNESCO. He was appointed Guyana's Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinaire to China, from 2010 to 2015. He is one of the longest serving diplomats in the history of Guyana, most of his work done in a voluntary unpaid capacity.
Lakshmi Persaud is a Trinidad-born, British-based writer who resides in London, England. She is the author of five novels: Butterfly in the Wind (1990), Sastra (1993), For the Love of My Name (2000), Raise the Lanterns High (2004) and Daughters of Empire (2012).
Jan Rynveld Carew was a Guyana-born novelist, playwright, poet and educator, who lived at various times in The Netherlands, Mexico, England, France, Spain, Ghana, Jamaica, Canada and the United States. His works, diverse in form and multifaceted, make Jan Carew an important intellectual of the Caribbean world. His poetry and his first two novels, Black Midas and The Wild Coast, were significant landmarks of the West Indian literature then attempting to cope with its colonial past and assert its wish for autonomy. He worked with the late President Cheddi Jagan in the fight for Guianese independence. Carew also played an important part in the Black movement gaining strength in England and North America, publishing reviews and newspapers, producing programmes and plays for the radio and the television. His scholarly research drove him to question traditional historiographies and the prevailing historical models of the conquest of America. The way he reframed Christopher Columbus as an historical character outside his mythical hagiography became a necessary path in his mind to build anew the Caribbean world on sounder foundations.
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.
Beryl Agatha Gilroy was a Guyanese teacher, novelist, an ethno-psychotherapist, and poet who has been described as "one of Britain's most significant post-war Caribbean migrants", part of the so-called "Windrush generation". Born in what was then British Guiana, she moved in the 1950s to the United Kingdom, where she became the first black headteacher in London. She married Patrick Gilroy, and her children were the academic Paul Gilroy, and Darla Gilroy.
Slade Hopkinson was a Guyana-born poet, playwright, actor and teacher.
Mark McWatt is a Guyanese writer and former professor of English at University of the West Indies.
Andrew Salkey was a Jamaican novelist, poet, children's books writer and journalist of Jamaican and Panamanian origin. He was born in Panama but raised in Jamaica, moving to Britain in the 1952 to pursue a job in the literary world, combining a job in a South London Comprehensive school teaching English with a job working on the door of a West End night club. The sixties and seventies saw Salkey working as a broadcaster for the BBC World Service, Caribbean section. A prolific writer and editor, he was the author of more than 30 books in the course of his career, including novels for adults and for children, poetry collections, anthologies, travelogues and essays. In the 1960s he was a co-founder with John La Rose and Kamau Brathwaite of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM). Salkey died in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he had been teaching since the 1970s, holding a lifetime position as Writer-In-Residence at Hampshire College.
Denis Williams was a Guyanese painter, author and archaeologist.
Colin Channer is a Jamaican writer, often referred to as "Bob Marley with a pen," due to the spiritual, sensual, social themes presented from a literary Jamaican perspective. Indeed, his first two full-length novels, Waiting in Vain and Satisfy My Soul, bear the titles of well known Marley songs. He has also written the short story collection Passing Through, and the novellas I'm Still Waiting and The Girl with the Golden Shoes. Some of his short stories have been anthologized.
Tim Lebbon is a British horror and dark fantasy writer.
A varsity novel is a novel whose main action is set in and around the campus of a university and focuses on students rather than faculty. Examples include Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Tom Sharpe's Porterhouse Blue and Stephen Fry's The Liar and Making History. Novels that focus on faculty rather than students are often considered to belong to a distinct genre, termed campus novels.
Karen Ann King-Aribisala is a Nigerian novelist, and short story writer. She is a Professor of English at the University of Lagos.
Merle Collins is a distinguished Grenadian poet and short story writer.
Myriam J. A. Chancy is a Haitian-Canadian-American writer and a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. As of 2008, she is the Hartley Burr Alexander Chair of Humanities at Scripps College of the Claremont Consortium. As a writer, she focuses on Haitian culture, gender, class, sexuality, and Caribbean women's studies. Her novels have won several awards, including the prestigious Guyana Prize in Literature Caribbean Award.
Christine Craig is a Jamaican writer living in Florida, US. She has published collections of poetry and short stories, as well as children's fiction and several non-fiction works.