Paulette Ramsay is a Jamaican poet, translator, journalist, novelist, and academic who studies race relations in the Caribbean.
She received her PhD from the University of the West Indies; was promoted to professor in the university's Department of Modern Languages & Literatures in 2017; and specializes in the field of Afro-Hispanic Studies, with a particular interest in the Afro-Mexican diaspora. [1] [2]
In 2003 Ramsay published a novella, Aunt Jen, a coming-of-age story told as a series of letters from a girl, Sunshine, to her absent mother. [3] It explores themes of growing up in Jamaica in the 1970s, during the early years of the country's independence. [4] In a review, Maureen Warner-Lewis notes Ramsay's "charmingly revelatory" narrative, and notes her use of code-switching in her literary style. [5]
Ramsay has published three collections of free verse poems. Reviewer Barbara Collash describes the first volume, Under Basil Leaves (2010), as displaying a "decidedly female perspective, female sensibility," and says they "constitute a fresh poetic retelling of the black tragic." [6]
She has also published or contributed to numerous textbooks, preparatory texts for the CAPE and CSEC exams, and academic texts.
In 2014, Ramsay received the National Order of Merit from the government of France, in the rank of Chevalier. [7]
In 2018 she received the Farquharson Institute of Public Affairs (FIPA) Award of the Century for Outstanding Scholarship in Literary and Language Studies and Creative Writing. [8]
The Honourable 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.
The University of the West Indies (UWI), originally University College of the West Indies, is a public university system established to serve the higher education needs of the residents of 18 English-speaking countries and territories in the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks and Caicos Islands. Each country is either a member of the Commonwealth of Nations or a British Overseas Territory. The aim of the university is to help "unlock the potential for economic and cultural growth" in the West Indies, thus allowing improved regional autonomy. The university was originally instituted as an independent external college of the University of London.
Mervyn Eustace Morris OM is a poet and professor emeritus at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. According to educator Ralph Thompson, "In addition to his poetry, which has ranked him among the top West Indian poets, he was one of the first academics to espouse the importance of nation language in helping to define in verse important aspects of Jamaican culture." Morris was Poet Laureate of Jamaica from 2014 to 2017.
Lorna Gaye Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist, a leading West Indian writer, whose career spans four decades. She is now Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, previously serving as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, serving in the role until 2020.
Edward Alston Cecil Baugh was a Jamaican poet and scholar, recognised as an authority on the work of Derek Walcott, whose Selected Poems (2007) Baugh edited, having in 1978 authored the first book-length study of the Nobel-winning poet's work, Derek Walcott: Memory as Vision.
Carolyn Cooper CD is a Jamaican author, essayist and literary scholar. She is a former professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. From 1975 to 1980, she was an assistant professor at Atlantic Union College in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. In 1980, she was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies (UWI), where she continued to work until her retirement as a professor in 2017. Also a newspaper journalist, Cooper writes a weekly column for the Sunday Gleaner.
Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley or Miss Lou, was a Jamaican poet, folklorist, writer, and educator. Writing and performing her poems in Jamaican Patois or Creole, Bennett worked to preserve the practice of presenting poetry, folk songs and stories in patois, establishing the validity of local languages for literary expression.
Omar Davies is a Jamaican former politician and academic. A member of the People's National Party (PNP), Davies was Minister of Finance from 1993 to 2007.
Erna Brodber is a Jamaican writer, sociologist and social activist. She is the sister of writer Velma Pollard.
The Musgrave Medal is an annual award by the Institute of Jamaica in recognition of achievement in art, science, and literature. Originally conceived in 1889 and named in memory of Sir Anthony Musgrave, the founder of the Institute and the former Governor of Jamaica who had died the previous year, the medal was the first to be awarded in the Western Hemisphere.
Jean Constance D'Costa is a Jamaican children's novelist, linguist, and professor emeritus. Her novels have been praised for their use of both Jamaican Creole and Standard English.
Elsa Goveia was born in British Guiana and became a foremost scholar and historian of the Caribbean. She was the first woman to become a professor at the newly created University College of the West Indies (UCWI) and first professor of West Indian studies in the UCWI History Department. Her seminal work, Slave Society in the British Leeward Islands at the End of the Eighteenth Century (1965), was a pioneering study of the institution of slavery and the first to put forth the concept of a "slave society" encompassing not just the slaves but the entire community. She was one of the pioneers of historical research on slavery and the Caribbean and is considered the "premier social historian" from the 1960s to her death.
Evelyn O'Callaghan is a Jamaican academic who is a professor of West Indian literature at the University of the West Indies. She was the first Jamaican woman to win a Rhodes Scholarship.
Sheila Dorothy King, CD was a Barbadian-born, Jamaican academic and physician. She was the second woman to be appointed as full professor at the University of the West Indies (UWI). She was the first woman appointed as a professor in the Faculty of Medicine in 1983, ten years after she was appointed as head of UWI's Microbiology Department. A specialist in infectious disease and viral epidemiology, she advised numerous national, regional and international departments and governmental agencies on such diseases as dengue, influenza, and typhoid. In 1998, she was honored as a Commander of the Order of Distinction.
Marguerite WykeOBE was an American-born Trinidadian teacher, poet, artist and politician. After growing up in Jersey City, New Jersey, and working as a teacher, she married and moved to Canada for a decade and then relocated to Trinidad. Writing for various journals and newspapers, and cultivating the artistic community in Trinidad, she became active in local politics. Renouncing her U.S. citizenship, Wyke became a Trinidadian citizen in 1953 and became active in the island's governance. With the establishment of the West Indies Federation, she was appointed as one of two senators from Trinidad and Tobago and one of only two women senators to serve in the Federal Parliament of the West Indies Federation. When the Federation dissolved, Wyke returned to her artistic endeavors, publishing poetry and participating in various art media.
Gema Ramkeesoon was a Trinidadian and Tobagonian social worker and women's rights activist who was one of the early pioneers of the women's movement in Trinidad and Tobago. She was honored for her social service work as a member of the Order of the British Empire in 1950 and received the gold Hummingbird Medal from Trinidad and Tobago in 1976.
Bridget Jones was a British literary academic who pioneered the inclusion of Caribbean literature in European university studies programs. While teaching French literature at the University of the West Indies, Jones developed an interest in French Caribbean writing and developed one of the first PhD curricula focused on francophone Caribbean literature. Upon returning to England, she taught at the University of Reading and the Roehampton Institute. An annual award, distributed by the Society for Caribbean Studies, as well as a scholarship program, given by the University of the West Indies, are named in her honour.
Maureen Warner-Lewis is a Trinidadian and Tobagonian academic whose career focused on the linguistic heritage and unique cultural traditions of the African diaspora of the Caribbean. Her area of focus has been to recover the links between African cultures and Caribbean cultures. She has been awarded multiple prizes for her works, including two Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Awards, the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica, and she was inducted into the Literary Hall of Fame of Tobago.
Donald Jasper Harris is a Jamaican-American economist and professor emeritus at Stanford University, known for applying post-Keynesian ideas to development economics. He is the father of the 49th and current vice president of the United States, Kamala Harris, as well as of her sister, lawyer and political commentator Maya Harris.
Shirley Campbell Barr is a Costa Rican anthropologist, activist and poet. Her poetic works give voice to her activism set on empowering black women and encouraging them to establish their place in history. Her poem Rotundamente negra has become a symbol for women in the Afro-descendant women's movements in Latin American for its self-affirming pro-black message.