Author | Journalist | Librarian | Prison Reform Activist
Life for me has been one big reading and writing adventure. In 1984, I quit my job at Boeing Commercial Airplane Company in Seattle, got on a plane and came to the island of Trinidad in the West Indies to see if there really was a place like the one featured in V.S. Naipaul's novel Miguel Street. I became an award-wining journalist for the Trinidad Express, and later moved to the Trinidad Guardian and Trinidad Newsday. My work on American pannist Andy Narell made a splash on CBS Sunday Morning with the late Charles Kuralt.
In 1995, I founded the Middle and High School English department at The International School of Port of Spain, and I eventually became the head librarian. Along my journey, I have had five Caribbean literature study companions and the children's novel Legend of the St Ann's Flood--published by Macmillan-Caribbean.
Archimedes publishers in Trinidad turned my collection of short stories, Speaking of Promises into a book. My nonfiction writing includes articles for Caribbean Beat magazine and a contribution to Seeing and Writing, a university textbook on writing published by the University of California at Berkeley and Bedford St. Martin’s Press. My nonfiction books include Wishing for Wings, the story of my class of teenage boys imprisoned for violent armed robbery and murder at the Youth Training Centre (YTC) and Making Waves: How the West Indies Shaped the US both products of Ian Randle Publishers in Jamaica.
In my home state of Ohio, I earned a BA degree in Anthropology from Ohio State University, followed by a Master’s in International Education from Framingham State University, Massachusetts and a library science certificate from Indiana State University. I work in Trinidad and Tobago’s prisons as an advocate for restorative justice and prison reform, and I continue to write books.