Author Bio
My late father was a Guyanese poet, playwright, actor. He acted in Derek Walcott's Trinidad Theatre Workshop, whose play "Ti-Jean and His Brothers" I reference throughout Brown Girl in the Ring. I recently discovered that in 1969, Daddy performed "Ti-Jean and His Brothers" on CBC Radio, playing all the parts. I'm now trying to find a recording of that performance. It would be nice to have a copy of it.
One of Daddy's best-known poems in the Caribbean was "Madwoman of Papine." It's a solemn, classically-structured piece about a bag lady who used to live in Kingston, Jamaica. She wore the same dress year in, year out, and would have screaming fights with the air. In the poem, Daddy describes her, then talks ironically about how an old, mad homeless woman will not be considered appropriate subject matter for the lofty art of poetry: Scholars, more brilliant than I could hope to be, Advised that if I valued poetry,I should eschew all sociology.
It tickles me then that Slade Hopkinson's daughter has become a writer of science fiction, a literature known for its critiques of social systems. I quoted from "Madwoman of Papine" in Brown Girl in the Ring. The character of Crazy Betty reminded me of Daddy's poem. It's a thrill to be able to see his writing in print next to mine.
I started writing fiction in 1993, the same year that Daddy died. Science fiction writer Judy Merril was going to teach a course in writing at Ryerson University in Toronto, where I live. In order to be placed in the class, you had to submit samples of your writing so that Judy could assemble a group of people who were all writing at more or less the same level of skill. I had not written any fiction at that point, but I admired Judy and wanted the chance to be taught by her. I cobbled together an unfinished six pages of something about a shy young woman who has visions and is trying to hide that fact from the people around her. I had no idea what I was writing or how to shape it. Other people handed in complete short stories.
The class never ran. There wasn't enough registration. But as she was want to do, Judy met with the handful of us who were interested, and showed us how to run our own writing group. "You don't really need me," she said. "Once you know how to do this, you can learn from each other." Without Judy, we started meeting and exchanging our manuscripts for critiquing every few weeks. Three of us are left from that original group. We've all had work published now, and two more people have joined the group.
I worked the piece I had submitted to Judy up to about ten thousand words, realized it was a novel, and panicked. I knew that I didn't yet have the skills to handle something in such a long form. In 1995, I attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop at Michigan State University, where I concentrated on learning how to write short fiction. When I returned from Clarion, I heard about the Warner Aspect First Novel Contest. I submitted my incomplete ten thousand word manuscript to Warner, figuring it would get turned down. Two weeks later I got a letter back from Warner: "Send us the whole novel to be forwarded to the second round of the competition--no drafts, please." !!!!!!
I wrote for two months solid, workshopping the manuscript every two weeks with my writing group. I discarded whole story lines when they became too complicated to pursue in the short time I had. I finished the manuscript the day before the January 31 deadline for submissions to the contest. I had no time to workshop the last bit with my group, I just printed it up, sent it off, and went to bed. Six months later, Betsy Mitchell from Warner Aspect phoned me to tell me that I had won. Writing a novel feels like wrestling a mattress, but it's been a fun, exhilarating process.
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halala.com: African American books and authors from Time Warner Trade Publishing