Abraham Rodriguez was born and raised in the South Bronx. His first book, The Boy without a Flag, was a 1993 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. his novel Spidertown won a 1995 American Book Award and was optioned by Columbia Pictures. His most recent novel is South by South Bronx (Akashic 2008). He currently lives in Berlin, Germany.

Program: Akashic Books presents

Achy Obejas is the author of various books, including the award-winning novel Days of Awe, the best-selling poetry chapbook This Is What Happened in Our Other Life, and the forthcoming novel Ruins. She is the editor of Akashic’s critically acclaimed crime fiction anthology Havana Noir, and the translator (into Spanish) for Junot Diaz’s Pultizer Prize-winning novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

She is currently the Sor Juana Writer in Residence at DePaul University in Chicago. She was born in Havana and continues to spend extended time there.

Aracelis Girmay is the author of Teeth, a collection of poems published by Curbstone Press. Her poems have also been published in Ploughshares, Bellevue Literary Review, Indiana Review, Callaloo, & MiPOesias, among other journals. Her collage-based picture book was published by George Braziller in 2005. She has been a featured reader at the Udi Aloni Project Room, Studio Museum in Harlem, Bowery Poetry Club, & prisons in Trenton & Manhattan.

A Cave Canem Fellow, Girmay teaches writing workshops in New York & California. She is the 2008–2009 visiting writer at Queens College.

Barbara Gloudon is a journalist, playwright and communications consultant. She hosts the call-in show Hotline on Radio Jamaica and writes a weekly public affairs column for the Jamaica Observer. She also chairs the Little Theatre Movement (LTM). In her LTM capacity she is a member of the creative team that produces the annual LTM National Pantomime, for which she has written over twenty scripts.

Ms. Gloudon is the author of the book Stella Seh,a satirical look at the social and political environment of Jamaica in the 1970s. Her many honors include the Order of Jamaica and the Order of Distinction from the government of Jamaica, and an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of the West Indies, Mona.

Beverley East is the bestselling author of the nonfiction book Finding Mr. Write. Born in Jamaica, she was raised and educated in London before moving to the United States America in the late 1980s. She returned to Jamaica in 2003 to complete Reaper of Souls, a historical novel based on the 1957 Kendal crash, a famous railway disaster. Much of the groundwork for this novel was laid in the Calabash Writer’s Workshop.

She is a contributor to the anthologies Journey to a Blissful Life and Journey to My Brother’s Soul. She writes a weekly column in the Sunday Gleaner and a bimonthly column the Sunday Herald. A leading authority on handwriting, she has practiced the science of Forensic Document Examination for over 19 years.

Program: Ladies First

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Beverley Anderson Manley is a political scientist, gender consultant and transformation trainer. As wife of former Prime Minister Michael Manley, she was very active in championing the causes of women and children. She has lectured extensively at various North American universities and attended numerous conferences worldwide. She currently hosts a discussion program on the Jamaican radio station, Hot 102 FM. The Manley Memoirs signals her debut as an author.

Bob Andy was one of the founding members of The Paragons, along with Tyrone Evans and Howard Barrett. His first solo hit came in 1996 with the single “I’ve Got To Go Back Home.” This was quickly followed by “Desperate Lover,” “Feeling Soul,” “Unchained” and “Too Experienced,” among others. He also composed songs for other artists such as Ken Boothe and Marcia Griffiths.

His Studio One album, Songbook, is hailed as one of the finest rocksteady albums of all time, and Andy is widely regarded as one of reggae’s most influential songwriters.

Chris Abani is a Nigerian poet and novelist and the author of Song for Night (a New York Times Editors' Choice), The Virgin of Flames, Becoming Abigail (a selection of the Essence magazine's Book Club and a New York Times Editors' Choice), and GraceLand (a selection of the Today Show Book Club; winner of the 2005 PEN/Hemingway Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award).

His other prizes include a PEN Freedom-to-Write Award, a Prince Claus Award, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship. He lives and teaches in California.

Cornelius Eady is the author of six books of poetry. They include Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and The Gathering of My Name, nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. His work has appeared in many journals, magazines and the anthologies Every Shut Eye Ain’t Asleep, In Search of Color Everywhere, and The Vintage Anthology of African American Poetry. With jazz musician Diedre Murray he co-wrote Running Man, a work of musical theater, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999.

With poet Toi Derricote, Eady is co-founder of Cave Canem, a summer workshop/retreat for African American poets. He is currently an Associate Professor of English and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame.

Denise Hunt discovered her passion for acting at a very early age while growing up in several parts of Kingston’s inner city. An acclaimed media personality today, she has directed theater workshops in the UK and high school productions in Jamaica, where she has appeared in numerous stage productions in over a decade of work. She is currently the presenter of D’Flex, a program on Hitz92 FM.

Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born in 1930 in St. Lucia. He has published five books of plays and eleven books of poetry with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His many honors and awards include an Obie Award for the play Dream On Monkey Mountain, the Guinness Award for Poetry, a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Cholmondeley Prize, the New Statesman’s Jock Campbell Award, the Welsh Arts Council International Writers Prize, a five-year fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation, and the Queen’s Medal for Poetry.

His most recent book, Selected Poems, was published in February 2007 and edited by Prof. Edward Baugh. Mr. Walcott divides his time between his home in St. Lucia and New York. During the academic year he teaches at Boston University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Edward Baugh is Professor Emeritus of English at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies. He is the author of Derek Walcott (Cambridge University Press, 2006), a critical study of the work of the St. Lucian Nobel Laureate. He is also the editor of the Laureate’s Selected Poems (Farrar Straus Giroux and Faber & Faber, 2007).

An accomplished poet in his own right, Professor Baugh has published two collections: A Tale From the Rainforest (Sandberry Press, 1988) and It Was the Singing (Sandberry Press, 2000). An audio version of It Was the Singing was produced by the Intermedia Foundation in 2002.

Cultural historian, social activist, scholar and author, Erna Brodber carried out pioneering research on oral histories and is a very important figure in Jamaican and Caribbean literature. Combining an academic approach (grounded in orthodox historical facts) with storytelling, her first novel, Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home won acclaim for its experimental structure and lucid insights.

Her many awards include a Gold Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica and the first Prince Claus Award to be awarded to a Jamaican.

Gerard Donovan was born in Ireland and currently lives in the United States. His first novel, Schopenhauer’s Telescope (2003), was long-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize and won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award in 2004. A second novel, Doctor Salt, followed in 2005. His third novel, Julius Winsome, was published in 2007 to critical acclaim, with The New Yorker commenting, “Donovan delivers with devastating force.” Editions in ten languages are currently in preparation or in print.

Gregory Pardlo’s first book, Totem, won the American Poetry Review/ Honickman Prize in 2007. His poems, reviews and translations have appeared in Calalloo, Gulf Coast, Lyric, Painted Bride Quarterly, Ploughshares, Seneca Review, Volt, Black Renaissance/ Renaissance Noir, and on National Public Radio.

A finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award in poetry, he is recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He has received other fellowships from the New York Times, the MacDowell Colony, and Cave Canem.

Jackie Kay was an adopted child of Scottish/Nigerian descent brought up by white parents in Glasgow. She is one of Britain’s best-known poets, appearing frequently on radio and TV programs on poetry and culture. Her most recent book, Darling: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2007), brings together many favorite poems from her four previous collections with new work that includes some lively poems for younger readers.

Her fiction works of fiction include the novel Trumpet (1998) and two collections of short stories—Why Don’t You Stop Talking? (2002), and Wish I Was Here (2006). Her honors include the Somerset Maugham Award, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Signal Poetry Award an MBE for services to literature. She lives in Manchester in the UK.

Juan de Recacoechea was born in La Paz , Bolivia, and worked as a journalist in Europe for almost twenty years. After returning to his native country, he helped found Bolivia's first state-run television network, served as its general manager, and dedicated himself to fiction writing. Recacoechea is the author of seven novels. American Visa is his first novel to be translated into English.

Lawrence Hill's novels and nonfiction have captured the interest and allegiance of readers around the world. His latest novel The Book of Negroes (which was published in the U.S. as Someone Knows My Name), was a national bestseller in his native Canada. It was also short-listed for a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

Hill is the son of a black father and a white mother who came to Canada from the United States. Growing up in Toronto in the Sixties, he was influenced by his parents' work in the human rights movement. Much of his writing–such as his memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada (HarperCollins, 2001), touches on issues of identity and belonging.

Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Lori Tharps attended Smith College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. After graduating from Columbia, she became a staff reporter at Vibe magazine and then a correspondent for Entertainment Weekly.

She is the co-author of the award-winning book, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America (St. Martin’s Press) and the memoir Kinky Gazpacho, (Atria). She currently lives in Philadelphia, where she teaches writing at Temple University and is at work on a novel about motherhood and identity. She knows how to say, “I love you” in seven languages.

Lorna Goodison was born in Jamaica, and has received several awards for her poetry and prose. The awards include the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Americas Region), the Musgrave Gold Medal from the Institute of Jamaica, and most recently the British Columbia National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, which receive for the book From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island (Harper Collins/Amistad).

From Harvey River’s critical acclaim includes glowing reviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly and Publishers Weekly, which gave it a starred review.

Margaret Cezair-Thompson was born in Jamaica. She is the author of two novels, The True History of Paradise (1999) and The Pirate’s Daughter (2007). The Pirate’s Daughter is the recipient of The Essence Literary Award for Fiction 2008.

Other publications include short fiction, essays and articles in Callaloo, the Washington Post, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Graham House Review and Elle. She teaches literature and creative writing at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, USA and has one son.

M. Mark is founding editor of PEN America: A Journal for Writers and Readers, published by PEN, the international organization of writers dedicated to advancing literature, defending free expression, and fostering international literary fellowship. In 2000, PEN America was named one of Library Journal’s Ten Best New Magazines. She also founded VLS, the Village Voice Literary Supplement, and served as its editor and publisher for fifteen years.

She has edited several books, including Disorderly Conduct: The VLS Fiction Reader; she has worked as developmental editor for Columbia University Press and as director of the Writers’ Center. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous journals and books. She teaches literature, writing, and media studies at Vassar College.

Natasha Trethewey is the author of Native Guard (Houghton Mifflin 2006), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2007. Her other collections are Bellocq’s Ophelia (Graywolf), a Notable Book selection of the American Library Association in 2003, and Domestic Work which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet in 2000. Domestic Work was also the winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize in 2001 and the Lillian Smith Award for Poetry.

She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. She currently holds the Phillis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry at Emory University.

Nina Revoyr was born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a Polish-American father. She grew up in Japan, Wisconsin, and California. In addition to her most recent novel, The Age of Dreaming, she is the author of the novels The Necessary Hunger and Southland.

Southland was a Book Sense 76 pick. It also won a Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award in addition to being named one of the Best Books of 2003 by the Los Angeles Times. Nina lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Rosie Stone is the author of the memoir No Stone Unturned in which she chronicles her her journey to accpepting the reality of her status as a person living her HIV, which she contracted from her husband, who died of AIDS in 1993.

The founder of the Carl Stone Scholarship Fund, Mrs. Stone was owner and CEO of the Stone Team, a polling organization from 1996 to 2006. She is currently a volunteer with Jamaica AIDS Support.

Thomas Glave is the editor of the anthology Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the Antilles. He is also the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories and the essay collection Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent,winner of a 2005 Lambda Literary Award. His new book, The Torturer’s Wife, is set for publication this Fall.

Mr. Glave’s fiction and nonfiction have recently appeared in Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, and African American Review. Additional work is schedule for publication in The Massachusetts Review and Bloom. He was recently appointed as the 2008–2009 Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Valzhyna Mort was born Valzhyna Martynava in 1981 in Minsk, Belarus. Her work has been translated into many European languages, the most recent being a book in Swedish, released in 2007. She has been published in various literary magazines and anthologies, including an Anthology of Belarusian Poetry (Sofia, 2002).

Her first book of poems, Factory of Tears, was published in a bilingual edition by Copper Canyon in Spring 2008. Valzhyna is the winner of several poetry competitions in Belarus. In 2004 she received the Crystal of Velenica Award in Slovenia, which is awarded for reading performances. In 2006 she was a poet-in-residence at Literarisches Colloquium in Berlin, Germany. She currently lives in the United States.

Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana in 1947. His books of poems include: Gilgamesh (a verse play); Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999; Talking Dirty to the Gods; Thieves of Paradise, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989, which won the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; Magic City; and Dien Cai Dau.

His latest book, Warhorses, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux in October 2008. Komunyakaa is currently Professor and Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University.

Founding member of the stellar reggae band Third World, Ibo Cooper has toured the world and recorded with singers and musicians around the globe. Currently this acclaimed singer, songwriter and keyboard player devotes the majority of his time to the development of young musicians at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts.

Kei Miller was born in Jamaica in 1978. He has been a Vera Rubin Fellow at the Yaddo Arts Colony in New York and an International Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa. His books of poetry are Kingdom of Empty Bellies and There Is An Anger That Moves. His books of fiction include the short story collection The Fear of Stones, which was short-listed for a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize, and a new novel, The Same Earth. Kei currently teaches creative writing at the University of Glasgow.

Lloyd Reckord is an actor, producer and director of stage, screen and television. He has worked extensively in Jamaica and the UK over a period of fifty years. He resides in Jamaica.

Steve Golding toured the world as the rhythm guitarist for Peter Tosh between 1981 and 1983. During that time he also worked on albums for Judy Mowatt and Rita Marley of the I Threes. His musical career began in the late 1960s when he joined the Rhythms. He joined the Fabulous Five in 1970 and remained with them until 1975. During this time with the Fabulous Five, Mr. Golding also played guitar and percussions for the National Dance Theater Company of Jamaica.

Many people remember Mr. Golding from his ten-year stint as a performer on Jamaica’s north coast with his childhood friend Ossie D. A founding member of the Jamaica Association of Composers, Artists and Performers (JACAP). Mr. Golding is involved in music in various aspects, including performance and teaching.

Wayne Armond began his musical career as a member of the Hell’s Angels in the 1970s. At the time he was a high school student. During this period he supported a number of leading Jamaican artists in performance, among them the Wailers, Ken Boothe, Delroy Wilson, Derrick Harriott and Marcia Griffiths. In 1978, he joined Byron Lee and the Dragonaires and formed the seminal reggae band Chalice two years later. With Chalice, he wrote and recorded a number of hits including “I Still Love You,” “Good To Be There,” “Dangerous Disturbances,” “Can’t Dub,” and “Revival Time.”

While Chalice was on hiatus for a number of years, Wayne toured as a guitarist with reggae icon Jimmy Cliff and jazz legend Monty Alexander. He’s done studio recordings with Alpha Blondy, Maxi Priest and Manu Dibango and written songs for Rita Marley, Culture, J.C. Lodge and Dennis Brown.

Seretse Small’s musical training began at the Jamaica School of Music then continued at the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music. Although he toured the world as the guitarist for Grammy-winning recording artiste Sean Paul for many years, he made his name in jazz. He has performed at several major music festivals throughout the Caribbean and has been featured on BET Jazz.