Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 16, 1993 TAG: 9302160245
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO LENGTH: Medium
WRITERS OF THE CARIBBEAN
Here is a brief list of recent literary award-winners from the Caribbean, as well as several other writers of note:DEREK WALCOTT - A St. Lucia native, Walcott was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in October. Works such as the epic poem "Omerus" wed classical European forms with Caribbean subjects. Other works include "Another Life," "Sea Grapes" and "The Star-Apple Kingdom." The 62-year-old poet and playwright now lives in Boston.
PATRICK CHAMOISEAU - A native of Martinique, the former social worker in November won France's top literary award, the Prix Goncourt, for his novel "Texaco." The epic tale, mixing French with Creole, traces 150 years of life in the Caribbean, much of it in the shantytown Texaco just outside Martinique's capital. The 38-year-old writer's previous books include "A Chronicle of Seven Miseries" and "In Praise of Creoleness."
DULCE MARIA LOYNAZ - The octogenarian Cuban poet won the Cervantes Prize, the most prominent Spanish literary award, in October. Her works include the novel "Garden" and poetry collections "Water Games," "Poems Without Names," "Love Letter to Tutankammon" and the "Last Days of a House."
ROBERTO RAMOS-PEREA - The Puerto Rican playwright on Dec. 16 won Spain's Tirso de Molina award for dramatic writing for "Lie To Me Some More (Mienteme Mas)," a work about Puerto Rican prostitutes who were used in experiments on birth control pills in the 1950s. Ramos-Perea, 33, is also director of the Ateneo Puertorriqueno, the island's leading private society of the arts and sciences.
OTHERS - A brief Caribbean primer would have to include Aime Cesaire, Martinique's literary dean who helped develop a black pride French literary and philosophical movement in the 1950s; Frank Martinus and Astrid Roemer, two of the top writers from the Dutch Caribbean and Suriname; emigrants Jamaica Kincaid, originally from Antigua, Caryl Phillips from St. Kitts, V.S. Naipaul from Trinidad, and novelists Viriato Sencion and Juan Bosch from the Dominican Republic. Also among top writers of the region are novelist Mayra Montero and playwright Luis Rafael Sanchez of Puerto Rico, poet Edward Kamau Brathwaite of Barbados, Cuban poets and critics Cintio Vitier, Firia Garcia Marruz and Antonio Benitez-Rojo and novelists Carlos Deupi and Guillermo Cabrera Infante.