Contributors























D.M. Aderibigbe is from Nigeria. His chapbook In Praise of Our Absent Father, was selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the APBF New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series. A 2017 OMI Fellow at Ledig House and a recipient of fellowships and honours from Ucross Foundation, Jentel Foundation, Dickinson House and Boston University where he received his MFA in creative writing as a BU Fellow and was also the recipient of a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship. He is interested in black diaspora issues linking the Caribbean, Africa, North America and elsewhere.

Ishara K. Agostini is a writer, student, and blogosphere denizen from Petit Valley, Trinidad. She is currently studying Public Health and Psychology in Atlanta, Georgia. She enjoys the sun, the sea, and the stars.

Lisa Allen-Agostini is a writer and editor from Trinidad and Tobago. Her book of poems Swallowing the Sky was published by Cane Arrow Press in 2015. She is the author of the YA novel The Chalice Project (Macmillan Caribbean, 2008) and co-editor of Trinidad Noir (Akashic Books, 2008). In 2017 she was a finalist for Code's 4th Annual Burt Award.

Pam Brown is an editor, reviewer & author of various chapbooks & pamphlets as well as eighteen books of poetry, most recently Missing up (Vagabond Press 2015), & a folio of collage & other graphics, Westernity (Stale Objects dePress, 2016). She lives in Sydney, Australia.

Sean Burn's third full poetry collection is that a bruise or a tattoo? is still available from shearsman press.

Mairéad Byrne’s most recent book is Famosa na sua cabeça (Famous in Your Head), selected and translated by Brazilian poet Dirceu Villa (São Paulo: Dobra Editorial 2015). She is also the author of two plays, five collaborative books with visual artists, and five poetry collections, published in Ireland, the United States, and on the Internet.

Peter Dominic Christopher is a journalist & rapso/spoken word poet from Trinidad & Tobago. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies and was a featured act in the Rapso Explosion’s ‘Breaking New Ground’ show in 2006.

Ian Ganassi’s poetry, prose and translations have appeared in more than 50 literary journals, including, most recently, New American Writing, New England Review, The Yale Review and Offcourse. His poetry collection Mean Numbers is published by China Grove. Selections from his collaboration with painter Lauren Bell can be found at www.thecorpses.com.

Alan Halsey's recent books are Rampant Inertia (Shearsman), Versions of Martial (Knives Folks & Spoons) and with Kelvin Corcoran A Horse That Runs: To & Fro with Wallace Stevens (Consititutional Information). Selected Poems 1988-2016 is forthcoming from Shearsman. His edition of Bill Griffith's Collected Poems 1966-1996 is published in three columes by Reality Street. He is an affiliated poet of Sheffield University's Centre for Poetry & Poetics.

Loretta Collins Klobah is a professor of Caribbean Literature and creative writing at the University of Puerto Rico. Her poetry collection The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2011) received the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize in Caribbean Literature in the category of poetry and was short listed for the 2012 Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection in the Forward poetry prizes. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Poetry 2016, BIM, Caribbean Beat Magazine, The Caribbean Writer, The Caribbean Review of Books, Poui: The Cave Hill Literary Annual, Susumba’s Book Bag, Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters, WomanSpeak, TriQuarterly Review, Quarterly West, Black Warrior Review, The Missouri Review, The Antioch Review, Cimarron Review and Poet Lore.

Gail McConnell has published poetry in The Manchester Review and, most recently, a long poem in Blackbox Manifold. She is Lecturer in English at Queen’s University Belfast and co-editor of The Irish Review.

Isha Mckenzie-Mavinga
is a transcultural psychotherapist, writer and Reiki Master. She co-authored In Search of Mr McKenzie (The Women’s Press, 1991), an autobiographical account of two sisters looking for their father’s Trinidadian family. Her recent publications - Black Issues in the Therapeutic Process (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and The Challenge of Racism in Therapeutic Practice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) - include poetry. Her work involves an exploration of diversity, cultural identity, personal heritage, and reminiscence, using autobiography and metaphor.

Brandon O’Brien is a performance poet and writer from Trinidad. His work has been shortlisted for the 2014 Alice Yard Prize for Art Writing and the 2014 and 2015 Small Axe Literary Competitions. His work is published or forthcoming in Strange Horizons, Uncanny Magazine, and New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean, among others. He is also a performer and facilitator with the.art.is Performing Arts Company, and the poetry editor of FIYAH.

Gilberte O’Sullivan’s poems have appeared in the anthology She Sex and at Moko magazine. She was been featured in “Who’s Next” at the NGC Bocas Literature Festival in 2014. Gilberte has been a features, arts and entertainment journalist for Trinidad’s Sunday Guardian and other local publications. She is completing her first poetry collection and a first novel; and is pursuing an MFA in fiction writing at the University of the West Indies.

Dawad Philip is a poet and artist living in San Fernando, Trinidad.

Victor D. Questel was born in Gonzalez village in 1949. He attended Trinity College and the University of the West Indies at St Augustine. At UWI he was the first student in the Department of English to be awarded a Ph D for his thesis on the work of Derek Walcott. He earned a living as a teacher and reviewer. He died suddenly in April 1982. In addition to his three poetry collections, he published widely in journals and in anthologies such as Now, Caribbean Rhythms, Melanthika and The Penguin Book of Caribbean Verse. His Collected Poems were published by Peepal Tree Press in 2016.

Desh Singh is twenty-year old university student. Raised in Penal, Trinidad and Tobago, he enjoys biking and nature. His writing reflects on people and the future they make for themselves. His list of influences include Evan Jones, V.S. Naipaul and Issac Assimov.

Robert Yerachmiel Snyderman is a doctoral student in English Literature at the University of Arizona and works as Program Specialist at the Jewish History Museum/Holocaust History Center in Tucson. His work culminates at the interstices of performance, visual art, and poetics, having over the last decade exhibited installations in galleries in New York City and Amsterdam, written and directed seven plays, and published essays and poems in many literary journals, including University of Toronto Journal of Jewish Thought, Colorado Review, and Jacket2.

Mervyn Taylor is a Trinidad-born poet who divides his time between Brooklyn, NY and his island home. The author of five books of poetry, including No Back Door and The Waving Gallery, Taylor also creates visual art, by way of costume design and assemblage. A graduate of Howard and Columbia Universities, he has spent many years teaching, at Bronx Community College, The New School, and in the NYC public school system. He has conducted poetry workshops in New York, in Trinidad, and recently, in Haiti. His latest collection, Voices Carry, is published by Shearsman Books.












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