Helon Habila was born in Nigeria. He worked as a lecturer and journalist in his country before he moved to England to become the African Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In 2002, he published his first novel, Waiting for an Angel, which is now available in several languages, including Dutch, Italian, Swedish and French. His writing has won many prizes including the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2001, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2003.

Mr. Habila is a contributing editor to the Virginia Quarterly Review. In 2006, he co-edited the British Council's anthology New Writing 14. His second novel, Measuring Time, won the Virginia Library Foundation Fiction Award in 2008 and was shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award that same year. His third novel, Oil on Water, will be released in August 2010. Mr. Habila, who was the 2005–2006 Chinua Achebe Fellow at Bard College in New York, currently teaches Creative Writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lives with his family.

Program: Aspects of the Novel

Geoff Dyer’s many books include But Beautiful; Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It; The Ongoing Moment, and, most recently, a novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi. A new collection of essays, Working the Room, will be published by Canongate in November.

Mr. Dyer’s awards? Let’s see—in 2003, a Lannan Literary Fellowship; in 2005, election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; in 2006, the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2009, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Best Comic Novel and the GQ Writer of the Year Award (for Jeff in Venice Death in Varanasi). He lives in London.

Colson Whitehead is the author of the novels The Intuitionist, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway award; John Henry Days, which won the Young Lions Fiction Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Apex Hides the Hurt, a New York Times Notable Book. He has also written a book of essays about his hometown, The Colossus of New York.

His most recent novel, Sag Harbor, was published last spring. Whitehead’s reviews, essays, and fiction have appeared in a number of publications, such as the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper's and Granta. The recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Wayne Armond began his musical career as a member of the Hell’s Angels in the 1970s. Still a high school student in 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, forming 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.

Program: Redemption Song—The Lyrics of Bob Marley’s Uprising

Michael Holgate has spent over fifteen years exploring the world of theatre, dance, music, film and writing. His writing for the stage includes the 2007 multiple award winning production Curfew: the Musical. He holds an undergraduate degree in English and a graduate degree in cultural studies from the University of the West Indies (UWI) at Mona.

He is the Performance Director for the hit Jamaican television program Digicel Rising Stars and the Creative Director of the performing arts company Ashe. His first novel Night of the Indigo has been recently published by Macmillan Caribbean as part of its new sci fi/fantasy series. Mr. Holgate is an assistant staff tutor at the Phillip Sherlock Center for the Creative Arts at UWI-Mona, and a part-time lecturer in folk and traditional dance at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston.

Program: Writers in Residence

A lifelong educator, Adjoa Dawes has taught at some of the top high schools in Jamaica. She earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of the West Indies-Mona. Currently the principal at the Emmanuel Christian Academy in Kingston, she is the third and youngest daughter of the late Neville Dawes, author of The Last Enchantment.

Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. His other artistic awards include the Enrico Mattei Award for the Humanities, the Benson Medal of the Royal Society for Literature and the UNESCO Medal for the Arts. Educated in Ibadan, Nigeria, and Leeds, UK, where he obtained an Honours degree in English Literature, Mr. Soyinka has held fellowships and professorial positions in theater and comparative literature at several universities, including the University of Ife in Nigeria; Cambridge in the UK; and Harvard in the U.S.

Essentially a playwright, Mr. Soyinka is also active as an essayist, poet, novelist and theater director. His plays include The Beatification of Area Boy, Death and the King’s Horseman and Opera Wonyosi. His essay collections include The Climate of Fear and Myth, Literature and the African World. His memoirs include You Must Set Forth at Dawn; Ake; Ibadan; Isara; Ake and The Man Died, the last covering his imprisonment from 1967 to 1969—most of it in solitary confinement—during the Nigerian Civil War. Married with children, Mr. Soyinka is currently the President’s Professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.

Program: The Chatterbox presents Wole Soyinka with Paul Holdengräber

Nami Mun was named Best New Novelist of 2009 by Chicago magazine. She is the author of the debut novel Miles from Nowhere, which was shortlisted for the Orange Award for New Writers. 

Ms. Mun, who currently lives and teaches in Chicago, was born in Seoul, South Korea, and was raised there and in the Bronx. In addition to writing and teaching she has worked as an Avon Lady, a street vendor, a photojournalist, a waitress, an activities coordinator for a nursing home, and a criminal defense investigator. Before earning an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, Ms. Mun earned an undergraduate degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley—and before that a GED. She has garnered fellowships from among others the Corporation of Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference, Tin House Writer’s Conference. 

Program: Aspects of the Novel

Leonie Evadne Forbes is an actress, broadcaster, tutor, poet, playwright and mother. She was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and educated locally before going to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Her professional acting career, which began in 1956, includes lead roles in twelve Jamaican national pantomimes. She has starred in full-length feature films and television series including Children of Babylon, Milk and Honey, Soul Survivor, Shattered Image and the Canadian comedy series Lawd Have Mercy. Her honors include the Order of Distinction from the government of Jamaica and a silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica.

Program: The Last Enchantment

Grammy nominee Freddie McGregor is one of the enduring icons of Jamaican music. Equally at home in the lovers rock and roots & culture styles of Jamaican music, he has created long list of chart topping singles in his forty-year career. These hits include “Push Come to Shove,” “Africa Here I Come,” and his signature song “Big Ship.”

Like many of the artists who laid the foundation for reggae’s rise to international prominence in the 1970s, Mr. McGregor began his career in the 1960s. He started out as a member of the duo Freddie & Fitzroy (with Ernest “Fitzroy” Wilson), making his solo debut in 1977 with the album Mr. McGregor, which was followed by Bobby Babylon that same year. Big Ship appeared in 1981. Several outstanding albums have followed, including All In the Same Boat and Jamaican Classics. He received the Order of Distinction from the government of Jamaican in 2003 for his contribution to the island’s culture.

Kaylie Jones is the author of five novels: A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, Speak Now, Celeste Ascending, As Soon As It Rains, and Quite the Other Way. Her novels have been translated into many languages, including French, German, Polish, Turkish, and Japanese. Her latest book, a memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me, was published in August 2009, by William Morrow.

Ms. Jones chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, which awards $10,000 annually to an unpublished first novel. During the past 15 years, 12 of the winners have been published to impressive critical acclaim. She teaches in the MFA Writing and Literature program at Stony Brook Southampton and at the Wilkes University low-residency MFA program in professional writing. Born and raised in Paris, she lives in New York with her husband, daughter, and two mixed-breed mutts, Layla and Natalie.

Feryal Ali Gauhar is the author of the novels, No Space for Further Burials and The Scent of Wet Earth in August. She studied political economy at McGill University in Montreal, and has worked as a filmmaker and broadcaster in Europe and the U.S.

She has been imprisoned by two military regimes in Pakistan for her pro-democracy activism. In 1999 she was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. She lives in Lahore, Pakistan, with fourteen cats, three dogs, a turtle, and four donkeys.

Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, is a man of many accomplishments. In addition to being Jamaica’s Minister of Agriculture, he is a scholar and a business strategist. Before completing his doctorate in business administration at the University of Manchester in the UK, he completed a degree in marketing from Georgia State University in the U.S. and a degree in management studies from the University of the West Indies (Mona).

An expert in international business and marketing strategy, with a specialty in foreign direct investments and the impact of public policy on industry, Dr. Tufton has lectured and conducted business consultancies in Jamaica, the United Kingdom and the USA in several key areas including: international marketing; business strategy; and entrepreneurship. He has also served on the Boards of the West Indies Trust Company Limited, CARIMED (the Caribbean’s largest pharmaceutical distributor) and NCB Insurance Company Limited. In addition, he has had experience as a businessman, newspaper columnist and talk show host. Dr. Tufton is married and has three children.

Program: The Last Enchantment

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.

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and moved to London when she was four. Her first novel, The Icarus Girl, is about a young girl and her imaginary friend. Her second novel, The Opposite House, was a nominee for the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her third novel, White is For Witching, concerns the disappearance of a teenaged girl from a xenophobic house in Dover.

Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican writer, newspaper columnist and environmental activist. Before being this busy she was even busier. Her previous occupations include secretary, insurance executive, horse racing steward, mid-life student, social commentator, environmental advocate, radio talk show host, public speaker, and most recently, filmmaker.

She began writing for publication in 1991, when her short story “The Mango, the Ackee and the Breadfruit” won the Lifestyle Short Story competition. Her first novel Dog-Heart won a Gold Medal in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's National Creative Writing Competition in 2008 and was published by Peepal Tree Press in March 2010. Ms. McCaulay’s academic qualifications include an undergraduate degree in management studies and a graduate degree in public administration. Her honors include the 2006 Ewan P. McFarlane Award for Environmental Leadership in the Caribbean. 

Program: Writers in Residence

Seretse Small’s training began at the Jamaica School of Music then continued at the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music. He made his name as a jazz guitarist and has performed at major jazz festivals in Grenada, Jamaica and St Lucia. He’s also appeared as a featured artiste on the TV channel BET on Jazz.

Seretse spent three years on a world tour with Grammy-winning artiste Sean Paul. Since then he’s returned to Jamaica to focus on running his own music publishing company, Griot Music, which was selected as the National Coordinator for the Global Battle of the Bands. He’s also formed his own band, Sereste and the True Democrats.

Program: Redemption Song - The Lyrics of Bob Marley's Uprising

Sharon Olds is the author of eight volumes of poetry, the most recent of which is One Secret Thing. Born in San Francisco, she has earned numerous honors including a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the San Francisco Poetry Center Award (for her first collection Satan Says in 1980), and the Lamont Poetry Selection and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for The Dead and the Living in 1983.

Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, and the New York Times. Named New York State Poet Laureate (1998 – 2000), Olds teaches graduate poetry workshops at New York University as well as in the writing workshop she helped to found at a public hospital for the severely disabled. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. Her next collection is tentatively entitled Stags Leap: Poems 1997–2000. She lives in New Hampshire.

Program: Two the Hard Way (Scene I)

Russell Banks is the author of sixteen works of fiction, including the novels Continental Drift; Rule of the Bone; Cloudsplitter; The Darling and The Reserve. Two of his novels, The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction, have been adapted into award-winning films.

His numerous honors and awards include the Ingram Merrill Award, the John Dos Passos Award, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Laure Bataillon Prize for best work of fiction translated into French, the last being for the French edition of The Darling. Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Affliction and Cloudsplitter were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Prize. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Banks was New York State Author (2004–2008). He is the founder and President of Cities of Refuge North America.

Program: Two the Hard Way (Scene I)

Cristina García is the author of four novels: Dreaming in Cuban; The Agüero Sisters; Monkey Hunting; and A Handbook to Luck. A fifth novel, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, will be published in September 2010. García has edited two anthologies, Cubanísimo: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Cuban Literature; and Bordering Fires: The Vintage Book of Contemporary Mexican and Chicano/a Literature. Two works for young readers, The Dog Who Loved the Moon, and I Wanna Be Your Shoebox, were published in 2008.

A collection of poetry, The Lesser Tragedy of Death, was just published in May 2010. García’s work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into a dozen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently the artistic director for the Centrum Writers Exchange in Port Townsend, Washington and has taught literature and writing at numerous universities.

Bernice L. McFadden is the author of six critically acclaimed novels including, Glorious (Akashic 2010); the classic Sugar; and Nowhere Is a Place, which was a Washington Post Best Fiction title for 2006.

Ms. McFadden is a two time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist for fiction, as well as the recipient of two fiction honor awards from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her sophomore novel The Warmest December was praised by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison as “searing and expertly imagined.” Ms. McFadden lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she is working on her next novel.

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. He began his professional career as musician in the late 1960s when he joined the Rhythms, which paved his way for membership in the Fabulous Five in 1970. He remained with this popular Jamaican group until 1975. During this time Mr. Golding also played guitar and percussions for the National Dance Theater Company of Jamaica (NDTC).

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.

Program: Redemption Song—the Lyrics of Bob Marley’s Uprising

Christian Campbell is a writer of Bahamian and Trinidadian heritage. He is the author of the poetry collection Running the Dusk, which was selected as a finalist for the Cave Canem Prize by Sonia Sanchez. He studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and received a Ph.D at Duke.

Mr. Campbell’s poetry and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies such as Callaloo, The Indiana Review, Wasafiri, Poetry London, PN Review, New Caribbean Poetry and New Poetries IV. He has received grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Arvon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center and the University of Birmingham. He is a professor at the University of Toronto.

This very talented Jamaican is an actor, pastor and author. As an actor he has appeared in the films Third World Cop, One Love and Glory to Gloriana. He is one half of the very popular comedic duo Bello and Blakka as well as the author of the book Sex in the Church.

Program: The Last Enchantment

Billy Collins was the United States Poet Laureate from 2001–2003, and the New York State Poet from 2004–2006. He has published nine collections of poetry, including Questions About Angels; The Art of Drowning; Picnic; Lightning and Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes. He is the editor of two anthologies of contemporary poetry—Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry and 180 More: Extraordinary Poems for Everyday. He was the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2006, and the editor of Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems about Birds, with paintings by David Allen Sibley.

Mr. Collins’ awards include fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has also been awarded the Oscar Blumenthal Prize, the Bess Hokin Prize, the Frederick Bock Prize, and the Levinson Prize — all awarded by Poetry magazine. In October 2004, Mr. Collins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Mark Twain Award for Humor in Poetry. He a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York.

Program: Two the Hard Way (Scene II)

Oxford University graduate, biology teacher, senior lecturer, vice-principal—none of these sound like a description of a children’s writer, but these all describe Helen Williams (pen-name Billy Elm).

On retiring after 38 years in the classroom, she settled down to follow her passion—creating stories for children. In addition to reading “how-to” books on writing, and analyzing books written for children, she joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and became a member of an online writers group. Today she is the author of the novel Delroy in the Marog Kingdom, published by Macmillan Caribbean. Originally, from England, she continues to take her inspiration from Jamaica, her country of choice.

Program: Writers in Residence

Matthew Shenoda is the author of the poetry collections Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone and Somewhere Else, winner of the American Book Award in 2006. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his family.

He is the Assistant Provost for Equity & Diversity at the California Institute of the Arts, where is also a professor in the School of Critical Studies.

Program: Men at Work

Ishion Hutchinson is one of the original members of the Calabash Writers Workshop. He is a graduate of the University of the West Indies and New York University, where he earned his MFA in Creative Writing.

His work has appeared in the LA Review, Poetry
International, the Caribbean Review of Books and other journals. His first book of poetry, Far District, was published by Peepal Tree Press in Spring 2010. He currently holds a Vice-Presidential Scholarship to the University of Utah.

Etana is one the most refreshing performers—male or female—to emerge out of Jamaica in the new century. Her 2008 debut CD The Strong One was a smash in Jamaica and many other parts of the world, yielding hits such as “Roots,” “Don’t Forget,” and the folk-inspired “Wrong Address,” which was released as a single in 2007.

Born Shauna McKenzie, she grew up in a family of boys in east Kingston and moved to Florida in the early 90s where she attended college and began her singing career in a girl group. But the professional image-makers wanted her to become someone she was not. So she returned to Jamaica where she reconnected with her Rastafarian principles and restarted her career, first as back up singer for Richie Spice and then on her own.

Program: Calabashment

Sudeep Sen is widely acknowledged as a leading poet of the younger generation. He read English Literature at the University of Delhi & as an Inlaks Scholar received an MS from the Journalism School at Columbia University (New York). His awards, fellowships & residencies include: Hawthornden Fellowship (UK), Pushcart Prize nomination (USA), BreadLoaf (USA), Pleiades (Macedonia), nlpvf Dutch Foundation for Literature (Amsterdam), Ledig House (New York), and Sanskriti (New Delhi). He was international writer-in-residence at the Scottish Poetry Library (Edinburgh) & visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Program: Two the Hard Way (Scene II)