Elizabeth Alexander was born in New York City and grew up in Washington, DC. She received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.A. from Boston University, and the Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania. Alexander has read her poetry and lectured on African-American literature and culture across the country and abroad. She has published four books of poems, The Venus Hottentot (1990), Body of Life (1996), Antebellum Dream Book (2001) and, most recently, American Sublime (2005), which was one of three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Her collection of essays, The Black Interior, was published in 2004, and her play, "Diva Studies," was produced at the Yale School of Drama. Her poems are anthologized in dozens of collections and have been translated into Spanish, German, Italian, and Bengali.

Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago, the George Kent Award, given by Gwendolyn Brooks, and a Guggenheim fellowship. She is an inaugural recipient of the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954.” She has taught at Haverford College, the University of Chicago, New York University, and Smith College, where she was Grace Hazard Conkling Poet-in-Residence and first director of the Poetry Center at Smith College. She is presently Professor of American and African-American Studies at Yale University.

Program: America the Beautiful

Best known as the lead singer of the seminal reggae band Chalice, Wayne Armond began his music career in the 1970s during his high school years as a member of the Hell’s Angels. During this time he supported a number of leading Jamaican artists in performance, among them the Wailers, Ken Boothe, Delroy Wilson, Derrick Harriott and Marcia Griffiths. In 1978, he joined Byron Lee and the Dragonaires as guitarist, forming Chalice two years later in 1980. With Chalice, he wrote and recorded a number of hits including “I Still Love You,” “Good To Be There,” “Dangerous Disturbances,” “Can’t Dub,” and “Revival Time.” Chalice recently reunited and has received a warm welcome back.

After Chalice, Mr. Armond toured the world for six years as a guitarist with reggae icon Jimmy Cliff. He has also toured as a guitarist with jazz legend Monty Alexander. Mr. Armond’s list of studio collaborations includes sessions with Alpha Blondy, Maxi Priest and Manu Dibango. Mr. Armond has written songs that have been recorded by some of reggae’s most important artistes, among them, Rita Marley, Culture, J.C. Lodge and the late Dennis Brown.

Program: Exodus / 96 degrees in the Shade

Jabari Asim is perhaps the most influential African American literary critic of his generation. As the Deputy Editor of Washington Post Book World, he helps determine coverage of not just black literature but also poetry, essays, fiction and nonfiction created around the world.
His comprehensive cultural history The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't and Why was published by Houghton Mifflin in March 2007. This seminal work reveals how the slur has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America over the last 400 years. Jabari Asim and his wife Liana have five children and live in Maryland.

Program: The Chatterbox presents…

Gabeba Baderoon is a South African poet. She is the author of three collections of poetry, The Dream in the Next Body (2005), The Museum of Ordinary Life (2005) and A Hundred Silences (2006). The Dream in the Next Body was named a ‘Notable Book of 2005’ by the Sunday Independent in South Africa, and A hundred silences was named a ‘Writer’s Choice Book of 2006’ in the Independent in Nigeria.

Gabeba received the Guest Writer fellowship at the Nordic Africa Institute, and a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship. She has also held residencies in Belgium, Sweden and Germany, and is the recipient of the DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Poetry 2005.

Program: Afternoon Delight

D.Y. Béchard was born in the mountains of British Columbia to French-Canadian and American parents, and has since lived throughout Canada and the United States. Vandal Love is his first novel. He currently resides in Montréal.

Program: The CWP presents Best First Book

Cindy Breakspeare first stepped into the musical spotlight in Kingston, Jamaica, and people immediately responded to her unique vocal style . She has to date, released 5 singles including a cover of Bob Marley’s “Turn Your Lights Down Low” written for her by Bob himself. Working her way through the North Coast cabaret circuit in Jamaica, Cindy has toured extensively including Mexico, Brazil, North America, Japan, the Caribbean, Australia, Saipan and Guam.

As a former Miss World and the mother of Bob Marley’s youngest son, Cindy is no stranger to glamour, celebrity, and the spotlight. For the past 5 years she has performed with her husband Rupert Bent, and performs all genres of music including Reggae, Pop, Standards and Jazz.

Program: The Mystic Masseur

Peter Bunting is one of three co-founders of Dehring Bunting & Golding, one of Jamaica’s first private sector investment firms. He has served as Chief Executive Officer since 1996. Mr. Bunting is primarily involved with mapping the strategic direction of the firm and with overseeing the island-wide Branch Network, Financial Planning & Analysis and Human Resources & Administration Units.

Involved in both the private and public sectors, he worked for over 10 years in the financial sector before his involvement as a public servant in the Ministry of Health, and as a Member of Parliament in the constituency of Clarendon. Mr. Bunting, a graduate of McGill with a Bachelors Degree in Engineering (Mech.), also holds a Master of Business Administration Degree from the University of Florida, Florida.

Program: The Mystic Masseur

Maxine Case was born in Cape Town into a family of readers and writers. Her mother is the well-known children’s author, Dianne Case and her sister Bonita also writes.

After school, Maxine studied advertising and then completed an IMM diploma. After a brief stint in the corporate world, she followed her passion for books; cutting her teeth in the publishing industry by “doing everything” for Kwagga Publishers and later freelancing as a project manager for authors both locally and abroad ghosting several books as diverse as children’s books, religious tracts and the inevitable self-help books.

Maxine’s first published work, a short story called “Homing Pigeons” was included in African Compass New writing from southern Africa 2005, a collection published by New Africa Books. All we have left unsaid is her debut novel.

Program: The CWP presents Best First Book

Professor Barry Chevannes, a graduate of Boston College, the University of the West Indies (UWI), and received his doctorate from Columbia University, where he defended his thesis on the Rastafari movement in Jamaica. His publications in this area have made him one of the leading international scholars on the Rastafari.

Professor Chevannes's academic interests also include Caribbean culture and male gender issues, on which he has also published. His book, Learning to Be A Man: Culture, Socialization and Gender Identity in Five Caribbean Communities, won the Principal’s Award for the best publication in 2001. His most recent, in 2006, is Betwixt and Between: Explorations in an African-Caribbean Mindscape.

Professor Chevannes is well known for his public service. He chairs the Council of the Institute of Jamaica, is the founder of Fathers Incorporated, and of Partners for Peace, and is recognized for his original contribution to Jamaican folk and religious song heritage.
He is the recipient of several awards in Jamaica and internationally.

Professor Chevannes currently heads the Centre for Public Safety and Justice at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus.

Program: The Mystic Masseur

Maryse Condé was born on the French island of Guadeloupe into a middle class family. She was the last of eight children. She first studied in Guadeloupe and then graduated from the Sorbonne in Paris with a PhD in comparative literature. She divides her time between New York and Guadeloupe where she created in 2000 the Book Prize of the Prix des Ameriques Insulaires et de la Guyane which recompenses every two years a book devoted to Caribbean culture.

Maryse Condé is the recipient of many literary distinctions among which are the Prix Litteraire de la Femme (1988) for “I Tituba, Black Witch of Salem”, Prix Marguerite Yourcenar (2000) for “Tales from the Heart, True Stories from my Childhood” and Prix Carbet de la Caraibe (1997) for “Desirada”. Her works have been widely translated into many languages, and notably into English by her husband Richard Philcox. She received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for her novel “Who Slashed Celanire’s Throat” in 2005. She is also the author of many children’s books and plays as well as a number of essays.

She has received a Honoris Causa Doctorate from Lehman College, the City University of New York, Occidental College, Los Angeles and the University of the West Indies in Barbados and has been awarded Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships. She is the chairperson of the Comité pour la Mémoire de l’Esclavage created by the French President, Jacques Chirac, to enact the law making slavery a crime against humanity.
She is Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres and Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur.

Program: Supersize Me!

Ibo Cooper is one of the founding members of the reggae band Third World, whose albums include 96° In The Shade (Island Records, 1977), Journey to Addis (Island Records, 1978), Rock The World (CBS, 1981), You’ve Got the Power (CBS, 1982), Sense of Purpose (CBS, 1985) and Serious Business (CBS, 1989). Among the band’s hit singles are “Forbidden Love,” “Reggae Ambassador,” “Now That We Found Love,” “Jah Glory,” “Talk To Me,” “Irie Ites” and “Cool Meditation”.

After forming his first band in high school, Mr. Cooper formed Third World while majoring in math and physics at the University of the West Indies. Before forming Third World he was a member of another influential reggae band, Inner Circle. His list of musical collaborators includes Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley and Philly Soul legends Gamble & Huff. Mr. Cooper is currently the Head of the Popular Music Studies department at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica.

Program: Exodus / 96 Degrees in the Shade

Mike Farrell is best known for his eight years on M*A*S*H and five seasons on Providence. He is also a writer, director, and producer; co-chair emeritus of Human Rights Watch in Southern California; spokesperson for Concern America; and cofounder Artists United to Win Without War. As president of Death Penalty Focus, he speaks, writes, and works to abolish capital punishment. He lives in Los Angeles.

Program: The Chatterbox presents…

Steve Golding toured the world as the rhythm guitarist for Peter Tosh between 1981 and 1983. During that time he also worked on albums for Judy Mowatt and Rita Marley of the I Threes. After a childhood fling, he returned to music in the late 1960s when he joined the Rhythms, which paved his way for membership in the Fabulous Five in 1970. He remained with this popular Jamaican group until 1975. During this time, Mr. Golding also played guitar and percussions for the National Dance Theater Company of Jamaica (NDTC).

Many people remember Mr. Golding from his ten-year stint as a performer on Jamaica’s north coast with his childhood friend Ossie D. A founding member of the Jamaica Association of Composers, Artists and Performers (JACAP). Mr. Golding is involved in music in various aspects, including performance and teaching.

Program: Exodus / 96 Degrees in the Shade

Terrance Hayes is the author of Wind in a Box (Penguin 2006), Hip Logic (Penguin 2002) and Muscular Music (Carnegie Mellon University Contemporary Classics, 2005 and Tia Chucha Press, 1999). His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a National Poetry Series award, a Pushcart Prize, two Best American Poetry selections, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

A South Carolina native, he is a Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his family.

Program: Afternoon Delight

Kendel Hippolyte, born in St.Lucia in 1952, has been described by The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry as ‘Perhaps the outstanding poet of his generation’. As a poet, his writing ranges across the continuum of language from traditional forms like the villanelle to free verse and forms influenced by rap and reggae. He has published five books of poetry, the latest being Night Vision (2005), and his poetry has appeared in various journals and anthologies.

He has also edited poetry anthologies from Saint Lucia and the Eastern Caribbean. A playwright and theatre director, he has twice won various prizes in Saint Lucia in those areas as well as for poetry. He has been the recipient of a James Michener Fellowship to study poetry and an OAS scholarship to study theatre. He was awarded the St.Lucia Medal of Merit (Gold) in 2000 for his contribution to the arts.

Program: Afternoon Delight

Linda Susan Jackson’s first collection of poems, What Yellow Sounds Like, was a finalist in the 2006 National Poetry Series Competition and will be published by Tia Chucha Press in Spring 2007. She has published two chapbooks, Vitelline Blues and A History of Beauty.

Most recently her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Brilliant Corners, Asheville Poetry Review, Gathering Ground, Heliotrope, Los Angeles Review, Rivendell, Warpland, and Brooklyn Review 21 among other journals and has been featured on From the Fishouse audio archive. She is an Assistant Professor and Deputy Chair of the English Department at Medgar Evers College/City University of New York and a Cave Canem graduate fellow.

Program: America the Beautiful

Shaun Johnson worked as a journalist for many years, launching South Africa’s Sunday Independent and becoming MD of Independent Newspapers in South Africa, before accepting the role of CEO for the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. The Native Commissioner is his first novel. He lives in Cape Town.

Program: The CWP presents Best Book

Lloyd Jones is a fiction writer drawn to a sympathetic portrayal of ordinary middle-class life, a suburban realist who simultaneously challenges realism, subverts fictional norms, defies categories and writes narratives which are challenging, original and in some cases controversial.

He was born in Lower Hutt, which has remained a frequent setting and subject, and graduated from Victoria University, then working as a journalist and consultant, but always as a committed writer. He has continued to live in the Hutt Valley or Eastbourne, apart from several periods in USA and in 1988 as the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Fellow at Menton. He has also held the Scholarship in Letters and other awards.

Program: The CWP presents Best Book

Felicia Luna Lemus is the author of two novels, Like Son (Akashic Books, April 2007) and Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).

Raised behind the infamous Orange Curtain of Southern California's Orange County, as a child Felicia felt an uncanny connection with the world of The Twilight Zone, which she watched obsessively. Years passed and Felicia acquired an embarrassingly excessive amount of theater training, graduated high school at age sixteen, and worked as a sadly uptight teenaged coffee house manager while attending community college. Eventually, Felicia completed an additional three years of bookish pursuits at U.C. Irvine (History B.A., 1997, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa). In 1998, she moved to the east side of Los Angeles to be as transgressive as an awkward nerd could be. In 2000, she earned an M.F.A. in Writing from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

Felicia teaches writing at The New School University and lives in the East Village of Manhattan.

Program: Akashic Books presents

Joe Meno is the author of the novels Hairstyles of the Damned, The Boy Detective Fails, How the Hula Girl Sings, and Tender As Hellfire. He was the winner of the 2003 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction and is a professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.

Program: Akashic Books presents

Naeem Murr was born and raised in London and has lived in the USA since 1987. He has published a number of prize-winning stories and novellas. His critically acclaimed first novel, The Boy, was published in 1998 and has been translated into six languages.

Program: The CWP presents Best Book

Andrew O’Connor was born in 1978 in Warragul, Victoria, Australia. He studied Arts at Melbourne University before traveling and working in central and northern Australia. For the last four years, Andrew has divided his time between stints teaching English (ESL) in various regions of Japan, and writing in Australia.

Program: The CWP presents Best First Book

Michael Ondaatje is one of the world’s foremost writers – his artistry and aesthetic have influenced an entire generation of writers and readers. Although he is best known as a novelist, Ondaatje’s work also encompasses memoir, poetry, and film, and reveals a passion for defying conventional form. In his transcendent novel The English Patient—later made into the Academy Award-winning film—he explores the stories of people history fails to reveal, intersecting four diverse lives at the end of World War II.

Ondaatje is himself an interesting intersection of cultures. Born in Sri Lanka, the former Ceylon, of Indian/Dutch ancestry, he went to school in England, and then moved to Canada. He is now a Canadian citizen. From the memoir of his childhood, Running in the Family, to his Governor-General’s Award-winning book of poetry, There’s a Trick With a Knife I’m Learning To Do, to his classic novel, The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje casts a spell over his readers. And having won the British Commonwealth’s highest honor—the Booker Prize—he has taken his rightful place as a contemporary literary treasure.

He is the author of four collections of poetry including The Cinnamon Peeler and most recently, Handwriting. His works of fiction include Anil's Ghost, The English Patient, In the Skin of the Lion, Coming Through Slaughter, and The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.

In 2000, Michael Ondaatje was awarded the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, the Prix Medicis, the Governor General’s Award, and the Giller Prize for his novel Anil’s Ghost. Michael Ondaatje’s most recent non-fiction work is The Conversations: Walter Murch & the Art of Editing Film. His latest novel is entitled Divisadero (2007).

Program: Supersize Me!

Aaron Petrovich is a writer of fiction and theatre living in Brooklyn, New York. He is a regular contributor to the Exquisite Corpse and associate editor at Akashic Books. His theatrical works have appeared in the Midtown International Theatre Festival, Manhattan Theatre Source, Improvised and Otherwise (a festival of sound and form), the Estrogenius Festival, and the New York Solo Play Lab. THE SESSION is his first book.

Program: Akashic Books presents

Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts, brought up in England, but now divides his time between New York and St.Kitts. He is the author of eight novels and three books of non-fiction. He has also written for theatre, television and film.

His awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize for his novel A Distant Shore.

For more information, please visit www.carylphillips.com

Program: Supersize Me!

Pat is a true philanthropist, and she has been acknowledged for her philanthropic works – working especially with young people. She is now in the process of hosting a radio programme dealing with the community on diverse issues. Her contribution to community development and the field of arts has won her a numerous awards
Currently, she serves on many boards, the majority of which are of national or community interest.

Pat is one of three recognized Art Evaluators in Jamaica. She acts as Corporate Art Consultant and art buyer for companies and individuals.

Program: The Mystic Masseur

David Adams Richards’ most recent novel, River of the Brokenhearted, was received with immense critical acclaim. Mercy Among the Children won the 2000 Giller Prize and was nominated for the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Award. He is the author of the celebrated Miramichi trilogy: Nights Below Station Street, winner of the Governor General’s Award; Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace, winner of the Canadian Authors Association Award; and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. His 1998 novel, The Bay of Love and Sorrows, has been made into a feature film.

Program: The CWP presents Best Book

This is Sereste Small’s 20th year as a professional musician. His training began at the Jamaica School of Music then continued at the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music. He made his name as a jazz guitarist and has performed at major jazz festivals in Grenada, Jamaica and St Lucia. He’s also appeared as a featured artiste on the TV channel BET on Jazz.

Seretse spent the past three years on a world tour with Grammy-winning artiste Sean Paul. Since then he’s returned to Jamaica to focus on running his own music publishing company, Griot Music, which was recently selected as the National Coordinator for the Global Battle of the Bands. He’s also formed his own band, Sereste and the True Democrats, which is in the process of recording its first album

Program: Exodus / 96 Degrees in the Shade

Smith also penned the critically acclaimed history Africans in America and the award-winning children’s book Janna and the Kings. She is currently working on Fixed on a Furious Star, a biography of Harriet Tubman, and Blood Dazzler, a book of poems about the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

A four-time individual champion on the National Poetry Slam, Smith has also been a featured poet on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and has performed her work around the world. She has written and performed two one-woman plays, one of which was produced by Derek Walcott’s Trinidad Theater Workshop. She is a Cave Canem faculty member and has served as the Bruce McEver Chair in Writing at Georgia Tech University. Last year, in a ceremony at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center of Chicago State University, she was inducted into the National Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent.

Program: America the Beautiful