International Recognition for Caribbean Canadian Writers

Dionne Brand and Canisia Lubrin, two Caribbean Canadian writers established in Ontario, were recently honoured in their field. Now's a good time to discover them by borrowing their books at the library, if you haven't already.

Brand was born in Trinidad and Tobago and moved to Toronto in the 70s. She has been awarded several Canadian literary awards since the late 90s for her work as a novelist, poet and essayist, and was also invested into the Order of Canada. Her 2018 novel, Theory, was recently awarded with Yale University's Windham-Campbell Prize in the Fiction category... which brings us to Canisia Lubrin, this year's winner of the same prize in the Poetry category.

Poet Canisia Lubrin's The Dyzgraphxst not only won the Windham-Campbell Prize, but also the OCM Bocas Prize, an international award that honours Caribbean writers. The Ottawa Public Library also owns her previously published collection of poems Voodoo Hypothesis, of which CBC Books said it was one of Canada's best poetry book published in 2017.

Originally from the island of St. Lucia in the Caribbean, Lubrin, who now lives in Whitby Ontario, is quite involved in our literary world and has recently been named the poetry editor of the famous Canadian publishing house McClelland & Stewart. Interestingly enough, the previous person in this position at McClelland & Stewart was... Dionne Brand.

It's a small world after all!