Oonya Kempadoo

Oonya Kempadoo (born 1966) is a novelist who was born in the UK of Guyanese parentage, her father being the writer Peter Kempadoo.[1]

Biography

Born in Sussex, England, "of mixed Indian, African, Scottish, and Amerindian descent", Oonya Kempadoo was brought up in Guyana from the age of five.[2] She has studied art in Amsterdam, and has also lived in Trinidad, St. Lucia, and Tobago. She now lives in St. George's, Grenada.[3][4]

Her first novel, Buxton Spice, a semi-autobiographical rural coming-of-age story,[2] was published 1998. The New York Times described it as "superb, and superbly written".[5] Her second book, Tide Running (Picador, 2001), set in Plymouth, Tobago, is the story of young brothers Cliff and Ossie.[6] Tide Running won the Casa de las Americas Literary Prize for best English or Creole novel.[3]

Both of these books were nominated for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Awards, the first in 2000 and the second in 2003.[7]

She was named a Great Talent for the Twenty-First Century by the Orange Prize judges and is a winner of the Casa de las Américas Prize.[8]

Her third novel All Decent Animals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013) was recommended on Oprah's 2013 Summer Reading List by Karen Russell, who said: "How am I only now finding out about this writer? It's as if she's inventing her own language, which is incantatory, dense, and lush. The authority and blood pulse of it seduced me."[9]

Bibliography

References

  1. Petamber Persaud, "Peter Kempadoo - Preserving our literary heritage", Kyk-Over-Al, 18 March 2006. (Source: Interview with Peter Kempadoo on Monday 13 March 2006, Guyana Chronicle, Georgetown, Guyana.)
  2. 1 2 Author biography, "Was Me Mudda" — Artists in Conversation, BOMB 86, Winter 2004.
  3. 1 2 Oonya Kempadoo biography, Macmillan Publishers.
  4. Allyson Latta, "'Living in That Moment': Interview with Grenada-based novelist Oonya Kempadoo", Memories into Story, 11 March 2013.
  5. Patrick Markee (11 July 1999). "The Tree That Knew Too Much". New York Times. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
  6. Glenville Lovell (18 May 2003). "Body Heat". Washington Post. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
  7. "Tide Running". International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Dublin City Public Libraries. 2003. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
  8. "The Casa de Las Americas Literary Prize", Guyana Chronicle, 31 March 2012.
  9. Karen Russell on "All Decent Animals", O's 2013 Summer Reading List.

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/8/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.