Biographies

of Caribbean
Authors
By
-Shazira Ally
-Anjinie Beepath
-Karuna Jagnanan
-Ishita Verma
 Caribbean Authors

Earl Lovelace Lakshmi Persad

V.S Naipaul Merle Hodge
Samuel Selvon Marlene Nourbese
……………………………………………..Phillips
Earl Lovelace
 Earl Lovelace
As a writer and storyteller his novels, short stories, and plays explore the effects the
significant social, economic, and political change of late twentieth-century Trinidad have had
on the lives of individuals and communities. A storyteller at heart, the prevalence of dialect
in Lovelace's writing, and the ease with which he uses it, foregrounds the importance of the
Caribbean's oral traditions to his writing and narrative structure.
Nationality: Trinidadian.
Born: Taco, Trinidad, 1935.
Career: Proofreader, Trinidad Guardian, 1953-54; civil servant: agricultural assistant in
Jamaica, 1956-66; journalist, Trinidad and Tobago Express, 1967; lecturer in English,
University of the District of Columbia, 1971-73; writer-in-residence, Hartwick College,
Oneonta, New York, 1986. Since 1977 teacher, University of the West Indies, Saint
Augustine, Trinidad.
Awards: B.P. Independence award, 1965; Pegasus Literary award, 1966; Guggenheim
fellowship, 1980; National Endowment for the Humanities grant, 1986; Commonwealth
Writers' prize, 1997.
Some of his awards:
• 1998, Shortlist, International Dublin Literary Award for Salt.
• 2002, Honorary Doctorate of Letters from University of the West
Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad & Tobago, 2002.
• 2011, Grand Prize for Caribbean Literature, from Regional Council of
Guadeloupe, for Is Just a Movie.
• 2012, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for Is Just a Movie
(winner of Fiction category and overall winner).
• 2012, Caribbean-Canadian Literary Award.
• 2012, Lifetime Literary Award from the National Library and
Information System (Nalis), Trinidad.
• 2018, Presidents Award, St. Martin Book Fair.
Some of his works:
• While Gods Are Falling, London: Collins, 1965; Chicago, Illinois:
Regnery, 1966.
• The Schoolmaster, London: Collins, 1968.
• The Dragon Can't Dance, London: André Deutsch, 1979. Faber & Faber,
1998.
• The Wine of Astonishment, London: Andre Deutsch, 1982. Oxford:
Heinemann Educational Books, Caribbean Writers Series (1983); 2010
edition includes CSEC-specific study notes. ISBN 978-0-435-03340-8.
• Salt (winner of 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize; International
Dublin Literary Award shortlist 1998), London: Faber & Faber, 1996;
New York: Persea Books, 1997.
V.S Naipaul
 V.S Naipaul
V.S. Naipaul, in full Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, (born August 17, 1932, Trinidad—died at 85 on August
11, 2018, London, England), Trinidadian writer of Indian descent known for his pessimistic novels set in
developing countries. For these revelations of what the Swedish Academy called “suppressed histories,”
Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.
Descended from Hindu Indians who had immigrated to Trinidad as indentured servants, Naipaul left Trinidad
to attend the University of Oxford in 1950. He subsequently settled in England, although he travelled
extensively thereafter. His earliest books (The Mystic Masseur, 1957; The Suffrage of Elvira, 1958; and Miguel
Street, 1959) are ironic and satirical accounts of life in the Caribbean. His fourth novel, A House for Mr. Biswas
(1961), also set in Trinidad, was a much more important work and won him major recognition. It centres on
the main character’s attempt to assert his personal identity and establish his independence as symbolised by
owning his own house. Naipaul’s subsequent novels used other national settings but continued to explore the
personal and collective alienation experienced in new nations that were struggling to integrate their native
and Western-colonial heritages. The three stories in In a Free State (1971), which won Britain’s Booker Prize,
are set in various countries; Guerrillas (1975) is a despairing look at an abortive uprising on a Caribbean island;
and A Bend in the River (1979) pessimistically examines the uncertain future of a newly independent state in
Central Africa. A Way in the World (1994) is an essaylike novel examining how history forms individuals’
characters. Naipaul’s other novels include The Mimic Men (1967) and The Enigma of Arrival (1987).
V.S Naipaul
Among Naipaul’s nonfiction works are three studies of India, An
Area of Darkness (1965), India: A Wounded Civilization (1977),
and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990); The Five Societies—
British, French, and Dutch—in the West Indies (1963); and Among
the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981). Naipaul was knighted in
1989.
In 1998 he published Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among
the Converted Peoples, a portrayal of the Islamic faith in the lives
of ordinary people in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Half
a Life (2001) is a novel about an Indian immigrant to England and
then Africa. He becomes “half a person,” as Naipaul has said,
“living a borrowed life.” Released the year that Naipaul received
the Nobel Prize, Half a Life was considered by many critics to
illustrate beautifully the reasons that he won the prize.
Subsequent works include The Writer and the World (2002) and
Literary Occasions (2003), both collections of previously
published essays. The novel Magic Seeds (2004) is a sequel to
Half a Life. In The Masque of Africa (2010)—which was based on
his travels in Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, and
South Africa—Naipaul returned to his exploration of religion,
focusing on African beliefs.
Samuel Selvon
 Samuel Selvon
Samuel Selvon, in full Samuel Dickson Selvon, (born May 20, 1923, Trinidad—died at
70 on April 16, 1994, Port of Spain), Caribbean novelist and short-story writer of East
Indian descent, known for his vivid evocation of the life of East Indians living in the
West Indies and elsewhere. He came to public attention during the 1950s with a
number of other Caribbean writers, including V.S. Naipaul.
Selvon worked as a wireless operator for a local branch of the Royal Navy during
World War II on ships that patrolled the Caribbean; during a slack period he began to
write poetry. In 1946 he went to work at the Trinidad Guardian. In 1950 he went to
London, where he worked as a clerk for the Indian Embassy and wrote in his spare
time.
His first novel, A Brighter Sun (1952), describes East Indians and Creoles in Trinidad, their prejudices and mutual distrusts, and the
effect of this animosity on a young man. It was the first time that an East Indian author had written with such quiet authority and
simple charm about the life of these people. Its sequel, Turn Again Tiger (1958), follows the protagonist on a journey to his
homeland. In this novel, which is perhaps his best, Selvon made extensive and striking use of dialect. The Lonely Londoners (1956)
describes apparently naive immigrants living by their wits in a hostile city. His later works include a collection of short stories,
Ways of Sunlight (1958), and the novels I Hear Thunder (1962), The Housing Lark (1965), Moses Ascending (1975), and Moses
Migrating (1983), both sequels to The Lonely Londoners. Highway in the Sun (1991) is a collection of plays.
Lakshmi Persad
 Lakshmi Persad
She was born in 1939 in the small village of Streatham Lodge (later called Passy Village) in the countryside of Tunapuna,
Trinidad. Their ancestors, Hindus in Uttar Pradesh, migrated from India to the Caribbean in the 1890s. Both her parents were
in the retail store. She attended Tunapuna Government Elementary School, St. Augustine Girls' High School, and St. Joseph
Monastery in Port of Spain. She left Trinidad in 1957 and earned her bachelor of arts degree. And her PhD from Queen's
University Belfast in Northern Ireland and the Graduate School of Education Diploma from the University of Reading in the
United Kingdom. Her dissertation was "The Need and Potential of Agricultural Diversification in Barbados, West Indies."
Dr. Lakshmi Perseau is the wife of Professor Bishnodat Perseau, an economist who emigrated to the United Kingdom in
1974. She has three children, psychiatrist Rajendra Persaud, financial economist Professor Avinash Persaud, and Sharda
Dean. She has lived mainly in the UK since the 1970s, with a two year spell in Jamaica in the 1990s.
Dr Persaud taught at various schools in the Caribbean, including St. Augustine Girls High School in Trinidad, Bishop Ansty
High School and Tuna Puna Hindu School, Queen's College in Gaiana, Harrison College and St. Michael's School in Barbados.
.. After she studied to become a teacher, she became a freelance journalist. Persaud has written articles on socio-economic
issues in newspapers and magazines for many years. She read and recorded books on philosophy, economics and literature
for the Royal National Institute of Blind People in London. She began her new career as a fiction writer in the late 1980s. Her
short story See Saw Margery Daw aired on BBC World Service on Saturday, November 18th and Sunday, November 19th,
1995.
She has published five novels that have been frequently reviewed and
discussed in a number of academic publications.
▪ Butterfly in the Wind, Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press, 1990.
▪ Sastra, Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press, 1993.
▪ For the Love of My Name, Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press, 2000.
▪ Raise the Lanterns High, London: BlackAmber Publishers, 2004.
▪ translated into Italian as Tenete alte le lanterne, Rome: 66thand2nd, 2010.
▪ Daughters of Empire, Leeds, England: Peepal Tree Press, 2012.

In reputation of her work, Warwick University mounted a `Lakshmi

Persaud Research Fellowship' at its Centre for Translation and
Comparative Cultural Studies.
In 2012, in reputation of the fiftieth Anniversary of the Independence
of Trinidad and Tobago, the National Library and Information System
Authority (NALIS) offered Lakshmi Persaud with a Lifetime Literary
Award for her sizable contribution to the improvement of Trinidad and
Tobago`s Literature.
In October 2013, Persaud turned into conferred with an Honorary
Doctorate, Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.), with the aid of using The
University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, in reputation of her
literary contributions.
Marlene
Nourbese Phillips
Marlene Nourbese Phillip
Marlene Nourbese Phillip is a poet, writer and lawyer who lives in the City of Toronto. She was born in Tobago
and now lives in Canada. She was born on February 3rd, 1947 and is currently 75 years old. She practised law
for seven years in Toronto, first at Parkdale Community Services and then in the partnership, Jemmott and
Philip. During this time she completed two books of poetry. In l983 she gave up the practice of law to devote
more time to writing.
Although primarily a poet, Nourbese Philip also writes both fiction and non-fiction. Philip has published five
books of poetry, two novels, four books of collected essays and two plays. Her short stories, essays, reviews
and articles have appeared in magazines and journals in North America and England.
Some of her works are:
• Salmon Courage (1983)
• Thorns (1980)
• Looking for Livingstone ( 1991)
• Zong! (2008)
Merle Hodge
 Merle Hodge
Merle Hodge is a Trinidian novelist and literary critic. Merle Hodge was born in 1944, in Curepe, Trinidad, the
daughter of an immigration officer. She received both her elementary and high school education in Trinidad,
and as a student of Bishop Anstey High School, she won the
Trinidadian writer and essayist Merle Hodge has spent most of her life exploring the Caribbean cultural
identity from the perspective of a post-colonial writer. In its most generic characterization, "post-colonial" is
that which has been preceded by colonisation. In Hodge's case, her writing portrays the influence of colonial
education, language, and culture on the colonized.Trinidad and Tobago Girls’ Island Scholarship in 1962.
Hodges expounded on her ability to portray the impact of colonialism on the individual through her first novel
Crick Crack, Monkey published in 1970. Hodges' works reflect her emphasis on the female, and her
confrontation with personal, social and cultural issues. Some of her other works include “Beyond Negritude:
The Love Poems,” For the Life of Laetitia, and “Young Women and the Development of a Stable Family in the
Caribbean.” Among Hodges other accomplishments are working with the Bishop Regime, as well as taking on
the position; director of development and curriculum. Hodges continues to inspire her audience through
children’s books, short stories, articles and essays on the concerns of family and women.
Merle Hodge
Novels-
Crick Crack, Monkey.
For the life of laetitia.