Authors
Bishop Dr Joe Aldred
Thinking Outside the Box: On Race, Faith and Life (2013)
Bishop Dr Joe Aldred is an ecumenist, broadcaster, writer and speaker. He is a bishop in the Church of God of Prophecy; Secretary for Minority Ethnic Christian Affairs at Churches Together in England; a presenter on BBC Radio; and author and editor of several books and articles. His previous works include The Black Church in the 21st Century (co-ed.) and Respect: Understanding Caribbean British Christianity. He is an experienced pastor and participant in community development, including interfaith relations, education and health. He has a PhD in Theology from Sheffield University.
Khalil Rahman Ali
Sugar's Sweet Allure (2013)
Khalil Rahman Ali is a descendent of Indian indentured labourers to Guyana. He has recently retired after having served in prominent positions in the British National Health Service (NHS) for over thirty years. He is married, and has one daughter who is an aspiring International Human Rights lawyer. Khalil loves cricket, and is also an accomplished composer, singer, and performer of Indian music. He has produced two CDs, Bhajan Varenyam and Islamic Naat and Qaseeda, which have been widely distributed to the Indian Diaspora in the UK and abroad. Khalil hopes that Sugar’s Sweet Allure, his first novel, will touch a chord in every reader who will recognise something about their own family heritage.
Sharon Atkin
Classic Caribbean Cooking (2008)
Sharon Atkin is a writer, journalist and broadcaster who has written extensively on cookery, jazz music, history, dance, politics and community affairs. She has contributed to many publications including the Labour Herald, Caribbean Times, Spare Rib, Jazz on CD, Dancing Times and many regional newspapers. She has lectured at Stanford University, the University of the West Indies and Oxford University among others.
Colin Babb
They Gave the Crowd Plenty Fun: West Indian Cricket and its Relationship with the British-Resident Caribbean Diaspora (2012)
Colin Babb describes himself as a ‘BBC’, a British Born Caribbean. His family are from Guyana, Guadeloupe and Barbados. He has worked as a radio and online content producer and journalist for the BBC, and as a photographer in Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, Puerto Rico, Saint Lucia and Trinidad for educational book publishers. Colin has previously written about West Indian cricket for IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (2000) and The Bowling was Superfine: West Indian Writing and West Indian Cricket (2012). In 2012, he received an MA from the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick.
Brian A. Belton
Black Routes: Legacy of African Diaspora (2007)
Born and raised in the West Ham/Canning Town area of London, Brian Belton ‘graduated’ from the East End youth gang culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s to take up professional training in youth and community work. After practicing as a youth worker in Bethnal Green, he attended City University to gain his BSc. Working with some of the most challenging young people in locations as diverse as Glasgow and the Falkland Islands, Brian completed his Masters degree at Essex University and was awarded his Doctorate by the University of Kent in 2000 (his thesis focused on the nature of identity, race and ethnicity). Dr Brian Belton is now a Senior Lecturer at the YMCA George Williams College in Canning Town. He has taught all over the world and has written more than twenty books.
Katherine Bing
Singleholic (2009)
Katherine Bing was born in New Zealand, grew up in Canada and lives in London. Oxford educated, she teaches in London and has been looking for a boyfriend for as long as she can remember. Singleholic is her first novel.
Frank Birbalsingh
Passion & Exile: Essays in Caribbean Literature (1988 out of print); The People’s Progressive Party of Guyana, 1950-1992 - An Oral History (2007); The Rise of West Indian Cricket: From Colony to Nation (1997 reprinted)
Frank Birbalsingh is Professor Emeritus of English at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is a pioneering scholar in Caribbean studies, and has edited many ground-breaking studies.
Biscuit
What Being Black Is and What Being Black Isn’t (2010)
Biscuit was born in Acton, west London, and has lived in Brent, Stoke Newington and Seven Sisters. He was mentored by Paul Wilson-Eme, Andrew Muhammad and Lez Henry and his thinking has been developed by the books of Noam Chomsky, the speeches of Malcolm X and the learning gained through his residence in Lambeth, south London.
Barbara Blake Hannah
Growing Out: Black Hair & Black Pride in the Swinging Sixties (2010)
Barbara Blake Hannah is a renowned journalist, author and filmmaker. Her television and film work includes writing, producing and directing documentaries on eco-tourism and culture in Jamaica and the making of an acclaimed autobiographical documentary for Channel 4 in the UK. As a print journalist, she wrote features for over 30 years for the likes of the Jamaica Daily Gleaner, Jamaica Observer and Jamaica Daily News and in the UK for The Sunday Times, The Observer, Caribbean Times and Cosmopolitan. She has achieved several notable firsts. She was Britain’s first Black TV journalist; conducting news, current affairs and celebrity interviews on a daily network program. She was the first and only female Independent Senator in Jamaican political history; and she is the author of the first book on Rastafari by a member of the faith. Multilingual and an expert on race and culture, she has spoken and lectured around the world and was one of Jamaica’s delegates at the 2001 World Conference against Racism. Honoured by Ethiopia’s Crown Council with its Gold Adowa Centenary Medal and awarded a United Nations Peace Medal, she has worked as a special assistant in the Office of the Prime Minister of Jamaica and was Director of Public Relations for the City of Kingston.
Horace Campbell
Rasta & Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney (1997, 2007 reprinted)
Horace Campbell was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica in 1945. He is a writer, teacher and political activist who has taught in Africa, the Caribbean, Britain and North America. His writings include two books, Four Essays on Neo-Colonialism in Uganda and Pan-Africanism: The Struggle Against Neo-Colonialism and Imperialism, as well as numerous articles, papers and essays which have been published in various journals in Britain, North America, the Caribbean and Africa. He is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University in New York. Before teaching at Syracuse University, he taught at Northwestern University in Illinois and also spent six years teaching at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania.
Jan Carew
Potaro Dreams: My Youth in Guyana (2014)
Jan Carew was born in 1920 in Agricola Rome, a village on the Guyana coast. His maternal grandfather was the village schoolmaster. His paternal grandfather was a ship’s captain who plied between the Caribbean islands and South American mainland. He was also a part-time artist, painting designs on carriages. After attending Berbice High School in Guyana (formerly British Guiana), Jan Carew has lived abroad most of his life. In the course of living as a writer, painter, broadcaster, actor, activist and educator, he has resided in England, France, Holland, Spain, Ghana, Canada, Mexico and the United States. His novels and non-fiction include Black Midas, The Wild Coast, Green Winter, The Last Barbarian, Ghosts in Our Blood: with Malcolm X in Africa, England and the Caribbean, The Sisters and Manco’s Stories, Rape of Paradise: Columbus and the Birth of Racism in the Americas, The Guyanese Wanderer, and a multitude of plays, poetry, articles and stories. Jan Carew died on 6th December 2012 at the age of 92.
Willi Chen
Crossbones and Other Stories (2009); King of the Carnival and Other Stories (1988, 2006 reprinted)
Willi Chen is a national icon in Trinidad and Tobago. He has achieved this status by his amazing creative productivity during a lifetime devoted to the arts. He is a quintessential artist, a real ‘Renaissance man' – painter, sculptor, architect, poet, international published short-story writer, playwright, set designer, critic, essayist and general commentator on life in Trinidad and Tobago.
Mark Christian
Black Identity in the 20th Century: Expressions of the US and UK African Diaspora (Ed.) (2002)
A native of Liverpool, Dr Mark Christian is a professor of Black World Studies and Sociology at Miami University, Ohio.
Jacques Compton
An Introduction to Theatre Arts (2009); A Troubled Dream (2009);The West Indians: Portrait of a People (2009)
Jacques Compton was born in Saint Lucia and educated in Europe. He has worked as a freelance writer and broadcaster, and has lectured on Caribbean history, literature and culture at universities, colleges and schools in the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle and Far East as well as in the Caribbean. He has been an actor on stage, film and television; a musician and singer; and an impresario offering a platform to many West Indian and African performing artistes in the UK. He was Manager of Radio Saint Lucia and was Director of Culture with the Government of Saint Lucia. In 1982, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and in 1990, the French government appointed him a Chevalier De L’Ordre Des Arts et Des Lettres. In 2008, he was presented with an award by the University of the West Indies in recognition of his contributions to culture and the arts in Saint Lucia.
Dr David Dabydeen
Coolie Odyssey (1988, 2006 reprinted); India in the Caribbean (Ed.) (1987, 2006 reprinted); A Reader's Guide to West Indian and Black British Literature (1997 reprinted)
Dr David Dabydeen is a lecturer in Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK. He is a winner of the Co mmonwealth Poetry Prize.
Robert J. Fernandes
Short and Sweet: A Collection of Guyanese Stories and Fables (2009)
Robert “Bobby” Fernandes was born in Georgetown, Guyana, in 1947 and is one of fourteen children. For more than thirty-five years he has travelled extensively throughout Guyana’s interior and is the country’s foremost nature photographer. From 1975-2007, he has had photographic exhibitions in Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica and Canada. He has authored many books including Visions of the Interior, Amerindian Life in Guyana, An Introduction to Birds of Guyana and The Shell Book of Guyana.
Aylia Fox
The 11-Step Guide to the 11+ Maze (2012)
Aylia Fox is a journalist who has worked on national newspapers, television and in local papers where she was Editor. A single mum, her interest in the 11+ began when she embarked on the preparation process with her daughter. She now offers help to parents struggling to do the same. Aylia lives in London.
Yussuff Haniff
Speeches by Errol Barrow (Ed.) (1987, 2006 reprinted)
Yussuff Haniff, a Guyanese journalist, wrote for the media both in Barbados and Guyana. He also contributed to the Caribbean Times newspaper and West Indian Digest magazine, and was Eastern Caribbean correspondent for EFE, the Spanish News Agency. Yussuff Hanif died in 1990.
Paget Henry
Shouldering Antigua and Barbuda: The Life of V.C. Bird (2010)
Paget Henry is from Antigua and Barbuda and is professor of sociology and Africana Studies at Brown University. He is the author of Caliban’s Reason: Introducing Afro-Caribbean Philosophy and Peripheral Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Antigua. He is the co-editor (with Paul Buhle) of CLR James’s Caribbean, and also (with Carl Stone) of The Newer Caribbean. In addition, he is the editor of the CLR James Journal and The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books.
Deanne Heron
Pardner Money Stories (2011) ; Pardner Money Stories, Vol. 2 (2012)
Deanne Heron has lived in Manchester, England, since moving from Jamaica in 1967. She attended Manchester Metropolitan University and gained a BA (hons) degree in Public Administration. After working for the local authority for a number of years, she became a foster carer in 2000 and has fostered twenty-six children to date, as well as having two daughters of her own and two grandsons. She is also a part-time counsellor/trainer and writes in her spare time. Deanne has written more than thirty short comedy stories, most of which have been published by the Jamaica Observer newspaper, as well as poetry and a science fiction novel. Deanne regularly reads her stories on local radio station Peace FM where she also presents a weekly news and music programme.
Joanne C. Hillhouse
The Boy from Willow Bend (2009)
Joanne C. Hillhouse is an exciting Antiguan writer whose writing has been acclaimed as “lyrical”, “nuanced”, “poetic”, and “refreshing”. She writes both poetry and fiction, and has published regionally and internationally. The finely crafted The Boy from Willow Bend, with its sensitive portrayal of a boy’s coming of age and faithful representation of island life, is her first book, now in its second printing. Her other notable work is Dancing Nude in the Moonlight. She is the recipient of a UNESCO Honour Award for her contribution to literacy and the literary arts in Antigua and Barbuda, and other awards, notably a fellowship to the prestigious Breadloaf Writers Conference in the US. Joanne freelances as a journalist and writer.
Asher Hoyles
Caribbean Publishing in Britain (2011); Dyslexia from a culturalperspective (2007); Moving Voices: Black Performance Poetry (2002) ; Remember Me: Achievements of Mixed Race People, Past and Present (1999, 2006 reprinted)
Asher Hoyles is an additional support tutor, specialising in dyslexia, at NewVIc Sixth Form College in Newham, east London. She is also a performance poet.
Martin Hoyles
The Axe Laid to the Root: The Story of Robert Wedderburn (2004); Caribbean Publishing in Britain (2011); Dyslexia from a cultural perspective (2007); Ira Aldridge: Celebrated 19th Century Actor (2008) ; Moving Voices: Black Performance Poetry (2002); Remember Me: Achievements of Mixed Race People, Past and Present (1999, 2006 reprinted); William Cuffay: The Life& Times of a Chartist Leader (2013)
Martin Hoyles taught in Newham secondary schools and at the University of East London. He has written books on gardening, childhood and literacy.
Basdeo Mangru
Dr Basdeo Mangru was educated at the University of Guyana and at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where he obtained his Doctorate. He has published extensively on the Indian diaspora in refereed journals and in anthologies. Previously a lecturer in History at the University of Guyana, he is currently Associate Professor of History at York College, City University of New York.
David Mayberry
Black Deaths in Police Custody andHuman Rights: The Failure of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (2008)
David Mayberry grew up in Leicester, one of the most multi-cultural cities in the UK. After completing a BA in History at the University of Leicester he studied for an MA in Human Rights at the School of Public Policy, University College, London. He currently works as the Diversity and Equality Officer for the City of Lincoln Council. In this role he looks to ensure that diversity and equality are mainstreamed into Council practices, while engaging with community groups in the city in addition to those who are ‘hard to reach’.
Derrick V. McKoy
Corruption: Law, Governance and Ethics in the Commonwealth Caribbean (2012)
Derrick McKoy was Contractor-General of Jamaica from 1998 to 2005 and in that capacity he was exposed to the most sensitive areas of the government’s procurement activities. He has served on the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council and in the Jamaica Defence Force Coast Guard (NR). He now serves as Chair of the Fair Trade Commission, Chair of the Antidumping and Subsidies Commission and as a member of the All-Island Electricity Appeals Tribunal, Jamaica. Dr McKoy lectures in the Faculty of Law at the University of the West Indies, Mona. He has lectured on the LLB and LLM Programmes at Cave Hill, and as an adjunct in the Mona School of Business and the Institute of International Relations, UWI, the Norman Manley Law School, Barry University’s Andreas School of Business, and Nova Southeastern University’s Huizenga School of Business. He is a graduate of the University of the West Indies, University College London, University of Leicester, Barry University, Nova Southeastern University, and the Norman Manley Law School and holds doctorates in Law and in Management. He is an Attorney-at-Law and a Justice of the Peace in Jamaica. Dr McKoy has consulted in the areas of competition law and policy, utilities regulations, and public sector reform. He has published in the areas of constitutional law, labour law, competition law, public management and governance, and the law of computers.
Paloma Mohamed
Communication, Power and Change in the Caribbean (2013)
Dr Paloma Mohamed is currently Director of the Centre for Communication Studies at the University of Guyana. She teaches Advanced Communications Research and Social Psychology. Her books include Notes on the Media in Guyana, Caribbean Mythology and Modern Life: 5 Plays for Young People and Condoned by Our Silence: Issues Impacting The Abuse of Children in Guyana ( UNICEF).
Dorbrene O’Marde
Dorbrene E. O’Marde is a recognised cultural worker throughout the Caribbean. He is best known as a playwright, director and producer (theatre and music), columnist, speaker and a calypso writer, judge and analyst. Send Out You Hand is his first novel although he has written across the genres – short and long prose, poetry, scientific, lyrics and drama. He has written and directed five full length plays with the Harambee Open Air Theatre, a group he helped form and led for fifteen years. His plays include ‘Fly on the Wall’, ‘Tangled Web’ and ‘The World Spin One Way’.
Petamber Persaud
Petamber Persaud is a Guyanese writer and publisher. He is a literary columnist for Guyana's Sunday Chronicle and the Sunday Kaieteur News and he is also editor of The Guyana Annual.
Rajandaye Ramkissooon-Chen
Meenachi: Fourth Volume of New Poems (2007)
Rajandaye is a fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists of London. She is a recipient of Trinidad and Tobago's National Chaconia Gold award.
Shridath Ramphal
Caribbean Challenges: SirShridath Ramphal’s CollectedCounsel (2012); Triumph for UNCLOS: The Guyana-Suriname Maritime Arbitration - A Compilation & Commentary (2008)
Shridath Ramphal - lawyer, diplomat, internationalist - was both Attorney General and at the helm of Guyana’s external relations from its independence in 1966 to 1975 when, as Foreign Minister, he was elected Secretary General of the 53-nation Commonwealth organisation. From then until 1990, he was a major player in the Commonwealth and a strong voice for the South in world affairs. An ardent West Indian regionalist, he was an architect of Caribbean integration and Chief Negotiator for the Region in its external economic relations from 1998 to 2002. From 2004, Ramphal led Guyana’s international legal team in the Guyana-Suriname Arbitration to delimit their maritime boundary under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Paulette A. Ramsay
October Afternoon (2012); Under Basil leaves: An Anthology of Poems (2010)
Paulette A. Ramsay is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Faculty of Humanities and Education at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Jamaica. In addition to having a strong record of academic writing and publishing, she is also a writer of fiction. Her novel, Aunt Jen, has been translated into German and Italian and is enjoying great popularity. She has also published short stories and poems in BIM, the Caribbean journal for the Arts and in the Caribbean Journal of Education.
Tamim Sadikali
Dear Infidel (2014)
Tamim Sadikali was born in Sidcup, Kent. He read Mathematics at Warwick University before entering the wonderful world of software, in which he now works, as a freelancer. Three things in life make him dizzy with joy – two are obvious and the third is squash. By day he kids himself that he cares about computing, and by night he writes – usually something caustic. This, his first novel, is the result.
Dr Brinsley Samaroo
The Art of Garnet Ifill: Glimpses of the Sugar Industry (2003); India in the Caribbean (Ed.) (1987, 2006 reprinted)
Dr Brinsley Samaroo is the Head of the History Department at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. He graduated from Delhi and London Universities where he studied under cultural and Commonwealth scholarships. He has taught history at Dalhousie, Laurentian and New Brunswick Universities in Canada and has written extensively on the Indian Diaspora.
Sir Ronald Sanders
Antigua Vision: Caribbean Reality - Perspectives of Prime Minister Lester BryantBird (2002); Crumbled Small: The Commonwealth Caribbean in World Politics (2005)
Sir Ronald Sanders has edited and authored several publications on the Caribbean. He has worked as a broadcaster with the BBC and is a former member of the Executive Board of UNESCO and Visiting Fellow at Oxford University. He is experienced in the affairs of the Caribbean in the international community having attended Conferences of Foreign Ministers and Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) for more than twenty years.
The former diplomat served twice as Antigua and Barbuda’s High Commissioner to the UK, and was the country’s Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organisation.
Clem Seecharan
From Ranji to Rohan: Cricket and Indian Identity in Colonial Guyana, 1890s-1960s (2009)
Clem Seecharan is Professor of Caribbean History at London Metropolitan University. His other books include Sweetening ‘Bitter Sugar’: Jock Campbell, the Booker Reformer in British Guiana, 1934-66 (winner of the Elsa Goveia Prize for 2005, awarded by the Association of Caribbean Historians), and Mother India’s Shadow over El Dorado: Indo-Guyanese Politics and Identity, 1890s-1930s.
Kadija Sesay
Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature (Ed) (2005)
Kadija Sesay is a literary activist, editor and publisher. A graduate of Birmingham University, she co-edited IC3: The Penguin Book of Black Writing in Britain and is the editor of Sable LitMag.
Stephen Spencer
A Dream Deferred: Guyanese Identity and the Shadow of Colonialism (2007)
Stephen Spencer has researched ethnic relations in the Caribbean and Australia. He is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Sheffield Hallam University where he has produced several books including Race & Ethnicity: Culture, Identity and Representation.
Alan Springer
e-Kidz: Mission to Cyberspace (2014)
Alan Springer is a musician, actor, stage writer/director and playwright. He wrote and directed the popular reggae musical ‘Rainbow Uprising’ that played at the Sadler’s Wells, Shaw and Astoria theatres in London. He has written plays for BBC Radio Drama and acted in the award-winning play, ‘Pulse’ at the Edinburgh Fringe. He has lived in London since his early teens. e-Kidz: Mission to Cyberspace is his third published book.
Tony Talburt
Rum, Rivalry & Resistance: Fighting for the Caribbean Spirit (2010)
Dr Tony Talburt has more than 25 years of teaching experience in colleges and universities in the UK in the areas of African and Caribbean Studies and government and politics. He was the programme co-ordinator for African and Caribbean Studies as part of Birmingham University B.A. Humanities Degree programme (1996-2004). He is currently the Education and Curriculum Advisor at the National Black Boys Can Association and is an associate lecturer at the Open University in international politics and development. He is a graduate from the University of the West Indies (Mona, Jamaica) with a B.A. in History and Social Science (1987), and the University of Warwick with an M.A. in International Studies (1991). His other publication is the Food of the Plantation Slaves of Jamaica (2004).
Hugh Tinker
A New System of Slavery: The Export of Indian Labour Overseas, 1830-1920 (1993)
Hugh Tinker was professor of Government and Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) until 1969, and Director of the Institute of Race Relations, London, from 1970 to 1972.
Matahari V.
Signature Cultures: Poems that Awaken Consciousness (2013)
Mala Thapar is a writer, teacher, artist and poet, who divides her time between Canada and India. She writes under the pen name of Matahari V.
Jacob Whittingham
What Being Black Is and What BeingBlack Isn’t (2010)
Jacob Whittingham was born in north London and since 2003 he has been a youth worker in many different communities – from Skopje to Southall, Lambeth to Lithuania, and Khakov to Kennington. He has spent most of his career working in Tottenham, Lambeth and Southwark and he attributes his inspiration and way of thinking to his discussions with theorists Johnson and Henry. His first publication was the short story, Loveless: No Love In The Club (2007) which was written in collaboration with his close friend, Biscuit.