Martin, Edwin

 

Edwin Martin has been a journalist for 33 years. He worked at the Miami Herald from 1986 to 2016 in several capacities, including feature writer, reporter, senior copy editor and online producer. One of the highlights of his early career came in 1991 when he interviewed the great Michael Jordan. Martin, a native of Montserrat, migrated to the United States at age 10. In 1987 he was the recipient of two prestigious scholarships: Garth Reeves Sr. (for minority students) and Society of Professional Journalists. He graduated in 1994 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Print Journalism from Florida International University with a minor in Political Science. At the Miami Herald he was twice awarded “Editor of the Quarter” for his headline writing and spearheading of special sections.

In 2017, Martin published Stranded Batsman: The Jim Allen Story, his first major book. It has been critically praised by several publications, including CricketWeb.Net, which wrote: “Martin has done a splendid job of reconstructing Allen’s story. The story that Martin tells is a thought-provoking one, very well written and thoroughly researched.” Martin also writes and sings calypso as a hobby and has entered competitions in Miami and Montserrat. He has also published two booklets about Montserrat’s Christmas Festival: Montserrat Festival 45thAnniversary Commemoration in 2007, and Montserrat Festival: This is us in 2017. He is also an avid cricket fan and has interviewed some of the greatest in the sport, including Brian Lara, Sir Garfield Sobers, Viv Richards and Sir Wes Hall.

He launched the website Montserrat Spotlight (www.montserratspotlight.com) on February 5, 2019. The site focuses on feature stories about Montserrat history with occasional hard news. The site’s motto is: “Our people, our stories. Our history.” Martin is currently working on his fourth publication called “100 Years of Montserrat Cricket.”

Senior, Olive

 

Olive Senior is the prizewinning author of 18 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature. Her latest is the picture book BoonoonoonousHairwith illustrations by Laura James.

Her many literary awards include the Commonwealth Writers Prize for her first book, Summer Lightningand most recently the 2016 OCM Bocas Award for Caribbean Literature for The Pain Tree. In 2015, she won the OCM Bocas non-fiction prize for Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canalwhich wasalso the Joint winner of the Caribbean Studies Association 2015 Lewis Prize and Finalist for the Foreword Reviews INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards 2015 (history category).

Her poetry book Over the Roofs of the Worldwas a finalist for Canada’s Governor-General’s Award and her children’s book Anna Carries Water is among the 20 books recommended by New York City Reads 365 for grade 1.

Her many honours and awards include the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica and an honorary doctorate (D.Litt.) from the University of the West Indies.

Her work has been translated into many languages and is taught internationally. Her poetry book Gardening in the Tropicswas on the CAPE syllabus for Caribbean schools for 14 years and has been translated into several languages including Arabic.

She is the subject of the book Olive Senior by Denise deCaires Narain in the Writers and their Work series, UK: Northcote Publishers, 2011.   

Olive Senior lectures and conducts writing workshops internationally and is on the faculty of the Humber School for Writers, Humber College, Toronto.

www.olivesenior.com

 

 

Bernard, Emily

Emily Bernard is the Julian Lindsay Green & Gold Professor of English. She holds a B. A. and a Ph. D. in American Studies from Yale University.

Bernard has received fellowships from the Alphonse A. Fletcher Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Arts Council, and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. She was the inaugural James Weldon Johnson Senior Research Fellow in African American Studies at Yale University. Her published works include: Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, which was a New York TimesNotable Book of the Year; Some of My Best Friends: Writers on Interracial Friendship, which was chosen by the New York Public Library as a Book for the Teen Age; and Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs, which received a 2010 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work.

Her book, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White, was published by Yale University Press in 2012.Her most recent work,Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine, was released in January 2019. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Lovecalls Black is the Body: “one of the most beautiful, elegant memoirs I’ve ever read.”

Bernard’s essays have been reprinted in several “Best Of” anthologies, and her books have been praised in O Magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, the New York Times, Essence Magazine, the New York Review of Books, and on National Public Radio. A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Emily Bernard lives in Burlington, Vermont with her husband, author and professor, John Gennari, and their twin thirteen-year old daughters.