COLIN CHANNER, NOVELIST

“No one describes the wonders and aches of love as sensuously as Colin Channer, and Channer has no rival when it comes to capturing the rhythmic beauty of island patois on the page.” —Z. Z. Packer

“One of the Caribbean Diaspora's finest writers . . .  Channer's compassion never fails to amaze.” —Junot Diaz

Colin Channer was born in Kingston, Jamaica and moved to New York in his late teens. He is the editor of the groundbreaking anthology Iron Balloons: Hit Fiction from Jamaica’s Calabash Writer’s Workshop. He is also the author of two novels, two novellas and a collection of stories. His influential first novel Waiting in Vain was a national bestseller, and a Critic’s Choice selection of the Washington Post, which described it as “a clear redefinition of the Caribbean novel.” His book, Passing Through, is a sexy, witty collection of connected stories set on San Carlos, an island with an old volcano that becomes a silent witness to the turbulent century from plantation days to the roots of revolution.

His most recent work is the novella The Girl With the Golden Shoes, which includes an afterword by Russell Banks, who calls the work, “a nearly perfect moral fable.” Set on a remote Caribbean island in the 1940s, the novella shadows what Edwidge Denticat describes as the “very moving and mesmerizing journey” of a shoeless 14 year-old girl who is determined to get all the way to Europe after she’s banished from her isolated fishing village. Forthcoming in 2008 is Lover’s Rock, by Atria Books.

Colin’s essays, criticism, and short fiction have appeared in the New York Times, Bomb, the Times Literary Supplement, Renaissance Noire, Obsidian III and Essence. He’s also written for the screen and has adapted his own work for the stage. He is an assistant professor of English and the coordinator of the B.A. creative writing program at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, NY.

In 2001, Colin founded the not-for-profit Calabash International Literary Festival Trust, which produces the annual Calabash International Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica. The Trust also produces publishing seminars, writing workshops and a film series in Kingston, Jamaica, at various times of the year.

The Calabash International Literary Festival has won high praise on both sides of the Atlantic. Britain’s Independent on Sunday describes it as “a high-grade international event in which writing from the Americas, Europe, Africa and Asia forms a thought-provoking mosaic of story, history and mythology.” The Associated Press describes it as “one of the most vibrant literary festivals to come around in a long time.”

In its June 15, 2005 edition Canada’s Globe and Mail wrote: “Channer has become one of the most significant literary figures in the Caribbean, influencing writers in the islands and those living and working abroad.”