Sandra Pouchet Paquet

Last updated
Sandra Pouchet Paquet
Born
Sandra Pouchet

Trinidad, Trinidad and Tobago
OccupationAcademic
Known forFounder of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal
Notable workThe Novels of George Lamming
Awards Bocas Henry Swanzy Award (2023)

Sandra Pouchet Paquet is a Trinidad-born scholar and academic. A pioneer in US-based Caribbean studies, she became a professor of English at the University of Miami in 1992. [1] She has been particularly noted for her work on writer George Lamming. [1] In 2023, she was honoured with the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters. [2]

Contents

Biography

Sandra Pouchet was born in Trinidad, and undertook studies for her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the United States. [2] From 1974 to 1977, she taught at the University of the West Indies, Mona, and she then held Assistant Professorships at the University of Hartford (1977–1985) and the University of Pennsylvania (1985–1992), before joining the University of Miami. [2] [3]

In 1982, she published the first book-length study of the fiction of George Lamming, The Novels of George Lamming, regarded as "a seminal work", [4] and she is also the author Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation (2002). [5] She was the founder in 2003 of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal and served as its editor until 2009. [1] She has also been guest editor of the journals Callaloo and West Indian Literature. [5]

Awards

She was the recipient of the 2023 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters, "in recognition of her pioneering contributions to academia, literature and cultural studies", [2] presented to her in April 2023 at the first fully in-person festival since 2019. [6]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Ramchand</span> Trinidadian academic and writer (born 1939)

Kenneth Ramchand is a Trinidad and Tobago academic and writer, who is widely respected as "arguably the most prominent living critic of Caribbean fiction". He has written extensively on many West Indian authors, including V. S. Naipaul, Earl Lovelace and Sam Selvon, as well as editing several significant cultural publications. His seminal text, The West Indian Novel and Its Background (1970), had a transformational effect on the syllabus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the internationalization of West Indian literature as an academic discipline.

Olive Marjorie Senior is a Jamaican poet, novelist, short story and non-fiction writer based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal in 2005 by the Institute of Jamaica for her contributions to literature. Senior was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2021.

Earl Wilbert Lovelace is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer. He is particularly recognized for his descriptive, dramatic fiction on Trinidadian culture: "Using Trinidadian dialect patterns and standard English, he probes the paradoxes often inherent in social change as well as the clash between rural and urban cultures." As Bernardine Evaristo notes, "Lovelace is unusual among celebrated Caribbean writers in that he has always lived in Trinidad. Most writers leave to find support for their literary endeavours elsewhere and this, arguably, shapes the literature, especially after long periods of exile. But Lovelace's fiction is deeply embedded in Trinidadian society and is written from the perspective of one whose ties to his homeland have never been broken."

Caribbean literature is the literature of the various territories of the Caribbean region. Literature in English from the former British West Indies may be referred to as Anglo-Caribbean or, in historical contexts, as West Indian literature. Most of these territories have become independent nations since the 1960s, though some retain colonial ties to the United Kingdom. They share, apart from the English language, a number of political, cultural, and social ties which make it useful to consider their literary output in a single category. The more wide-ranging term "Caribbean literature" generally refers to the literature of all Caribbean territories regardless of language—whether written in English, Spanish, French, Hindustani, or Dutch, or one of numerous creoles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Lamming</span> Barbadian novelist, essayist and poet (1927–2022)

George William Lamming OCC was a Barbadian novelist, essayist, and poet. He first won critical acclaim for In the Castle of My Skin, his 1953 debut novel. He also held academic posts, including as a distinguished visiting professor at Duke University and a visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brown University, and lectured extensively worldwide.

Merle Hodge is a Trinidadian novelist and literary critic. Her 1970 novel Crick Crack, Monkey is a classic of West Indian literature, and Hodge is acknowledged as the first black Caribbean woman to have published a major work of fiction.

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).

Monique Pauline Roffey is a Trinidadian-born British writer and memoirist. Her novels have been much acclaimed, winning awards including the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, for Archipelago, and the Costa Book of the Year award, for The Mermaid of Black Conch in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marina Salandy-Brown</span> Trinidad and Tobago journalist, broadcaster and cultural activist

Marina Salandy-Brown FRSA, Hon. FRSL, is a Trinidadian journalist, broadcaster and cultural activist. She was formerly an editor and Senior Manager in Radio and News and Current Affairs programmes with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London, one of the BBC's few top executives from an ethnic minority background. She is the founder and inaugural director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, held annually in Trinidad and Tobago since 2011, "the biggest literary festival in the Anglophone Caribbean", and of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She was also co-founder of the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize.

The NGC Bocas Lit Fest is the Trinidad and Tobago literary festival that takes place annually during the last weekend of April in Port of Spain. Inaugurated in 2011, it is the first major literary festival in the southern Caribbean and largest literary festival in the Anglophone Caribbean. A registered non-profit company, the festival has as its title sponsor the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago (NGC). Other sponsors and partners include First Citizens Bank, One Caribbean Media (OCM), who sponsor the associated OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, CODE, and the Commonwealth Foundation.

Henry Swanzy was an Anglo-Irish radio producer in Britain's BBC General Overseas Service who is best known for his role in promoting West Indian literature particularly through the programme Caribbean Voices, where in 1946 he took over from Una Marson, the programme's first producer. Swanzy introduced unpublished writers and continued the magazine programme "with energy, critical insight and generosity". It is widely acknowledged that "his influence on the development of Caribbean literature has been tremendous".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Randle</span> Jamaican publisher (born 1949)

Ian Randle OD is a Jamaican publisher. He is the founder of an eponymous independent publishing company whose main focus is on English-language readers. He has won awards including the Prince Claus Award in 2012 and the 2019 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for distinguished service to Caribbean letter.

Gordon Rohlehr was a Guyana-born scholar and critic of West Indian literature, noted for his study of popular culture in the Caribbean, including oral poetry, calypso and cricket. He pioneered the academic and intellectual study of Calypso, tracing its history over several centuries, writing a landmark work entitled Calypso and Society in Pre-Independence Trinidad (1989), and is considered the world's leading authority on its development.

<i>In the Castle of My Skin</i> 1953 novel by George Lamming

In the Castle of My Skin is the first and much acclaimed novel by Barbadian writer George Lamming, originally published in 1953 by Michael Joseph in London, and subsequently published in New York City by McGraw-Hill. The novel won a Somerset Maugham Award and was championed by eminent figures Jean-Paul Sartre and Richard Wright, the latter writing an introduction to the book's U.S. edition.

Jennifer Rahim was a Trinidadian fiction writer, poet and literary critic.

Anne Walmsley is a British-born editor, scholar, critic and author, notable as a specialist in Caribbean art and literature, whose career spans five decades. She is widely recognised for her work as Longman's Caribbean publisher, and for Caribbean books that she authored and edited. Her pioneering school anthology, The Sun's Eye: West Indian Writing for Young Readers (1968), drew on her use of local literary material while teaching in Jamaica. A participant in and chronicler of the Caribbean Artists Movement, Walmsley is also the author of The Caribbean Artists Movement: A Literary and Cultural History, 1966–1971 (1992) and Art in the Caribbean (2010). She lives in London.

Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw is a Trinidadian writer and academic, who is Professor of French Literature and Creative Writing at the University of the West Indies. Her writing encompasses both scholarly and creative work, and she has also co-edited several books. Walcott-Hackshaw is the daughter of Nobel Prize laureate Derek Walcott.

Lisa Allen-Agostini is a Trinidadian journalist, editor and writer of fiction, poetry and drama. She is also a stand-up comedian, performing as "Just Lisa".

Philip Nanton is a Vincentian writer, poet and spoken-word performer, based in Barbados. A sociologist by training, who also teaches cultural studies, he is Honorary Research Associate at the University of Birmingham, and lectures at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill. He has been a contributor on Caribbean culture and literature to journals and magazines such as The Caribbean Review of Books, Shibboleths: a Journal of Theory and Criticism and Caribbean Quarterly, and as a spoken-word artist has performed his work at festivals internationally. In 2012, he represented St. Vincent & the Grenadines at Poetry Parnassus in London.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Gifford, Sheryl (May 2012). "'this is how i know myself' | A Conversation with Sandra Pouchet Paquet". SX Salon . Retrieved 27 December 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Bocas Swanzy Award honours Trinidad-born scholar Sandra Pouchet Paquet". Bocas LitFest. 15 March 2023. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
  3. "Curriculum Vitae", University of Miami. August 2007.
  4. Gonzalez, LaVerne (Summer 1984). "[Review of] Sandra Poucbet Paquet. The Novels of George Lamming". Explorations in Sights and Sounds (4). Retrieved 27 December 2023.
  5. 1 2 "Caribbean Autobiography". University of Wisconsin Press. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
  6. Lindo, Paula (15 March 2023). "Bocas Lit Fest 2023 returns in person with 80 events". Trinidad and Tobago Newsday . Retrieved 27 December 2023.