Sharon Millar

Last updated

Sharon Millar is a Trinidadian writer. She was awarded the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2013 for "The Whale House". [1]

Contents

Life

Sharon Millar lives in Port of Spain with her husband and daughter. [2] She can trace her "roots in the Caribbean to the 17th century. I come from English, Portuguese, French, and Scottish ancestry." [3] Her works often focus on the themes of race and identity in the Caribbean and she has said: "my biggest challenge is to write against all the stereotypes of the Caribbean. The rest of the world sees the Caribbean region as having one culture, one people, one collective history. I think it's up to the fiction writers to show the world that each island is different and that we are much more than the tropical stereotype." [3]

Millar began writing fiction in workshops in the early 1990s under the mentorship of Wayne Brown and credits her commitment to "writing seriously" to "when I began writing with Wayne Brown again" in 2009. [4] She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University [5] and has lectured in Prose Fiction at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. [6]

Millar has also worked as a journalist, writing extensively for Caribbean Beat [7] and won a CTO Travel Media Award for her 2015 "Mermen Come Calling" piece in The New York Times . [8] Both her non-fiction and fiction writings explore folklore, legends, and the cultural distinctiveness of the Caribbean. Readers may notice that material from her journalism often appears in a different form in her fiction.[ citation needed ]

Works

Millar had her first international publication in Granta [9] with "The Whale House" [10] and her work has appeared in other publications including The Manchester Review, Small Axe , WomanSpeak, Griffith Review , and PREE. [11] Her story "The Whale House" was also anthologised in Pepperpot: Best New Stories from The Caribbean. [12]

The Whale House, [13] her first collection of short stories published by Peepal Tree Press, was praised by Claire Adam in The Guardian for its honest reflection of "contemporary Trinidad and Tobago society, with its racial tensions, still-open wounds of history, undercurrents of folklore and the supernatural". [14] Shivanee Ramlochan, a fellow Trinidadian writer and reviewer writing in Caribbean Beat, admired Millar's "dazzling attention to language's depths, suffusing her character descriptions and place evocations with a sensuous, restrained prose that feeds full-fathoms from the wild majesty of verdant ecosystems." [15] Jérôme Cooper, reviewing for the Dundee University Review of the Arts, also drew attention to the collection's strong sense of placemaking as a "as an exploration of personal and national identity, the uncanny yet familiar, and feminist themes that are forceful without ever being presumptuous." [16] Joanne Hillhouse writing in Wadadli Pen commented on Millar's originality: "She is a Trinidad writer who eschews Port of Spain and the more familiar geographic, ethnic, and emotional landscapes of the land and the literature for something...not as easily categorized". [17]

Speaking about her literary influences, Millar has said: "I am influenced by what I read. I went to university in Canada and read lots of early Margaret Atwood, Margaret Lawrence, Alice Munro. Also Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, and I love Bessie Head and Ben Okri. […] I'm still reading and learning the Caribbean canon, an intimidating and essential one. Sir Vidia Naipaul, Earl Lovelace, C. L. R. James, Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott, and too many others to list here, have set a very high bar." [18]

In interview with Karin Cecile Davidson in July 2013, Millar spoke about her sensitivity towards writing into a Caribbean space as a white, middle-class woman. "The Caribbean canon is young and is naturally, very politically charged with issues of ethnicity and identity. Migration and displacement are constant themes as are oppression, power, and authenticity. For a long time I couldn't write because I couldn't see how I could bring anything to the canon. I simply couldn't find a voice within that context. Now that I am older, I can see my way in, which is empowering. I can only write the story I know". She also noted the importance of writing in relation to complicated and fraught questions of Caribbean identity, "I really believe in the power of the story to help us see ourselves". [19] Similar issues are explored in her 2013 interview with Janine Mendes-Franco for Global Voices, [20] and a more in-depth discussion of whiteness and Caribbean identity can be found in Millar's contribution to Annalee Davis's White Creole Conversations. Millar has also responded to Ten Questions on Caribbean Literary Heritage.

Awards and recognition

In 2012, she was one of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest's New Talent Showcase writers, and in the same year, her short story "Friends" was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and she was nominated for the AWP Intro-Journal Award. [21]

In 2013, she was awarded the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for "The Whale House". [22] In the same year, she was nominated for the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writer's Prize for fiction. [23]

In 2015, her article "Mermen Come Calling", which was published in the New York Times, won a CTO Travel Media Award. [24]

In 2016, her collection The Whale House and other stories was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature in the fiction category. [25]

Bibliography

Short stories

Collections

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kamila Shamsie</span> Pakistani writer

Kamila Shamsie FRSL is a Pakistani and British writer and novelist who is best known for her award-winning novel Home Fire (2017). Named on Granta magazine's list of 20 best young British writers, Shamsie has been described by The New Indian Express as "a novelist to reckon with and to look forward to." She also writes for publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, Index on Censorship and Prospect, and broadcasts on radio.

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.

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."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kei Miller</span> Jamaican poet and fiction writer

Kei Miller is a Jamaican poet, fiction writer, essayist and blogger. He is also a professor of creative writing.

Rabindranath Maharaj is a Trinidadian-Canadian novelist, short story writer, and a founding editor of the Canadian literary journal Lichen. His novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy won the 2010 Trillium Book Award and the 2011 Toronto Book Award, and several of his books have been shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award.

OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, inaugurated in 2011 by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, is an annual literary award for books by Caribbean writers published in the previous year. It is the only prize in the region that is open to works of different literary genres by writers of Caribbean birth or citizenship.

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 Roffey, FRSL, 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.

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

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.

Barbara Jenkins is a Trinidadian writer, whose work since 2010 has won several international prizes, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Wasafiri New Writing Prize.

Marjorie Ruth Thorpe is a Trinidadian academic, lecturer, former diplomat and the first woman to have chaired the Public Service Commission (PSC) in Trinidad and Tobago. She is also a development practitioner with a particular interest in gender issues.

Nicholas Laughlin is a writer and editor from Trinidad and Tobago. He has been editor of The Caribbean Review of Books since 2004, and also edits the arts and travel magazine Caribbean Beat. He is the festival and programme director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, having worked alongside founder and managing director Marina Salandy-Brown since 2011.

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".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Jared Hosein</span> Novelist from Trinidad and Tobago (born 1986)

Kevin Jared Hosein is a Caribbean novelist and short-story writer from Trinidad and Tobago. Publications and outlets where his writings have appeared include Lightspeed magazine, Wasafiri and BBC Radio 4. He is best-known for winning the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, the most global literary prize in the world, with his story "Passage". He also won the regional (Caribbean) section of the Prize in 2015, with "The King of Settlement 4". His first adult novel, Hungry Ghosts, was announced for publication as a lead title in 2023 by Bloomsbury Publishing in the UK and Ecco Press in the US.

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.

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a Trinidadian writer. She was awarded the second prize for ‘Public Notice’ in the 2016 Small Axe Literary Competition. Her debut novel ‘When We Were Birds’ was released in 2022.

Jane Bryce is a British writer, journalist, literary and cultural critic, as well as an academic. She was born and raised in Tanzania, has lived in Italy, the UK and Nigeria, and since 1992 has been based in Barbados. Her writing for a wide range of publications has focused on contemporary African and Caribbean fiction, postcolonial cinema and creative writing, and she is Professor Emerita of African Literature and Cinema at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill.

References

  1. ↑ "Winners of Commonwealth book and short story prizes announced". Commonwealth. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  2. ↑ "Sharon Millar". Granta. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  3. 1 2 "Sharon Millar". Annalee Davis. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  4. ↑ "Talking with the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Co-Winner, Sharon Millar". Global Voices. 2013-08-08. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  5. ↑ "Sharon Millar". adda. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  6. ↑ "Sharon Millar | Peepal Tree Press". www.peepaltreepress.com. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  7. ↑ "Sharon Millar, Author at Caribbean Beat Magazine". Caribbean Beat Magazine. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  8. ↑ Millar, Sharon (2015-10-09). "On Tobago, Mermen Come Calling". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  9. ↑ "Talking with the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Co-Winner, Sharon Millar". Global Voices. 2013-08-08. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  10. ↑ "The Whale House". Granta. 2013-05-28. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  11. ↑ ap (2018-04-18). "Curry Duck". PREE. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  12. ↑ Pepperpot : best new stories from the Caribbean. Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Books/Peekash Press. 2014. ISBN   978-1-61775-283-4. OCLC   875095990.
  13. ↑ "The Whale House and other stories | Peepal Tree Press". www.peepaltreepress.com. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  14. ↑ Adam, Claire (2019-01-16). "Top 10 books about Trinidad and Tobago | Claire Adam". The Guardian. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  15. ↑ Ramlochan, Shivanee (2016-03-01). "Caribbean Bookshelf (March/April 2016)". Caribbean Beat Magazine. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  16. ↑ "The Whale House and Other Stories". dura-dundee.org.uk. 2015-10-20. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  17. ↑ Salazar, Vanessa (2015-07-05). "Sharon Millar's Whale House and Other Stories – Good Book. Go Read". Wadadli Pen. Retrieved 2022-08-10.
  18. ↑ "Sharon Millar — Thunder on a Thursday". Karin Cecile Davidson. Retrieved 2022-08-10.
  19. ↑ "Sharon Millar — Thunder on a Thursday". Karin Cecile Davidson. Retrieved 2022-08-10.
  20. ↑ "Talking with the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Co-Winner, Sharon Millar". Global Voices. 2013-08-08. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  21. ↑ "New Talent Showcase: Sharon Millar • Bocas Lit Fest". Bocas Lit Fest. 2012-04-30. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  22. ↑ "Winners of Commonwealth book and short story prizes announced". Commonwealth. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  23. ↑ "Six writers make shortlist for 2013 Hollick Arvon Prize • Bocas Lit Fest". Bocas Lit Fest. 2013-04-11. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  24. ↑ "Trinidad and Tobago wins at CTO Travel Media Awards | Trinidad and Tobago Government News". www.news.gov.tt. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  25. ↑ "Announcing the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize longlist • Bocas Lit Fest". Bocas Lit Fest. 2016-03-06. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  26. ↑ "The Whale House". Granta. 2013-05-28. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  27. ↑ "Making Guava Jelly". The Manchester Review. 2014-12-07. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  28. ↑ ""Ilyeana" by Sharon Millar". Akashic Books. 2015-08-13. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  29. ↑ Sweeting, Lynn (2016-03-30). WomanSpeak, A Journal of Writing and Art by Caribbean Women, Volume 8, 2016. Lulu.com. ISBN   978-1-329-88836-4.
  30. ↑ "Susumba's Book bag issue 8 by blumoonbooks - Issuu". issuu.com. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  31. ↑ "Peacock". adda. 2016-07-27. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  32. ↑ "Bell Mouth Guns, by Sharon Millar". Sliver of Stone Magazine. 2016-11-14. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
  33. ↑ "ISSUE ONE: CROSSROADS". PREE. Retrieved 2022-08-08.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.