Novelist, playwright and short-story writer Earl Lovelace was born in Toco, Trinidad in 1935 and grew up in Tobago. He worked for the Trinidad Guardian, then for the Department of Forestry and later as an agricultural assistant for the Department of Agriculture, gaining an intimate knowledge of rural Trinidad that has informed much of his fiction.
His first novel, While Gods Are Falling, was published in 1965 and won the British Petroleum Independence Literary Award. It was followed by The Schoolmaster (1968), about the impact of the arrival of a new teacher in a remote community. His third novel, The Dragon Can't Dance (1979), regarded by many critics as his best work, describes the rejuvenating effects of carnival on the inhabitants of a slum on the outskirts of Port of Spain. In The Wine of Astonishment (1982) he examines popular religion through the story of a member of the Baptist Church in a rural village. His novel, Salt, was published in 1996 and won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) in 1997. Set in Trinidad, the book explores the legacy of colonialism and slavery and the problems still faced by the country through the story of Alford George, a teacher turned politician. His Is Just a Movie (2012) was the winner of the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.
Merle Hodge is a Trinidadian writer and cultural and social activist. 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. Merle was born in 1944, in Calcutta Settlement, Carapichaima, Trinidad and Tobago. She was educated up to secondary level in Trinidad and Tobago, and at the University of London. She has taught at secondary schools in Trinidad and Tobago; in the teacher education programme of the Grenada Revolution; at The University of the West Indies (Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago campuses); The University of the Virgin Islands, and the colleges Wellesley and Dartmouth in the US. Among her areas of interest are language, creative writing and family – in the Caribbean. She is a cultural and social activist (co-founder of Women Working for Social Progress, aka “Workingwomen”); and a writer. She has published three novels: Crick Crack, Monkey (1970) and For the Life of Laetitia (1993) and One Day, One Day, Congotay (2022); short stories; papers in international journals; and a textbook, The Knots in English: A Manual for Caribbean Users (2011).
Nii Ayikwei Parkes is a multi-genre author, primarily known for his hybrid novel, Tail of the Blue Bird. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth Prize and went on to win the Prix Baudelaire, Prix Mahogany and Prix Laure Bataillon. Nii is also the author of two books of poetry, The Makings of You(2010) and The Geez (2020), which was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, shortlisted for the Walcott Prize, and was a Poetry Book Society 2020 Recommendation. A 2022/23 Fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, his latest novel, Azúcar, will be released in June 2023.