Andrew Salkey was a novelist, poet, freelance writer and journalist of Jamaican and Trinidadian origin. Salkey was born January 30 1928 in Panama but was raised in Jamaica. He died on April 28, 1995 in Amherst, Massachusetts. After completing his basic education in Jamaica, Salkey attended the University of London and became a part of the West Indian Students Union (WISU) which provided an effective forum for Caribbean students to express their ideas and provided voluntary support to the ‘harassed’ working class Caribbean immigrant community, during the 1960, 70s and 80s. The association also included Gerry Burton, Arif Ali Chris LeMaitre, John La rose and Horace Lashley Trinidad (Spanish, Trinity) is the largest and most populous of the 23 islands which make up the country of Trinidad and Tobago. ... Amherst is a town in Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. ... The University of London is a federation of colleges and institutes which together constitute one of the worlds largest universities. ...

Salkey published a number of novels over the course of his career. He was also a BBC interviewer and a professor in writing at Hampshire College in Amherst. Founded in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company Ltd (a privately owned company), subsequently Incorporated and nationalised in 1927 as The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC, also informally known as the Beeb or Auntie) is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world. ... Hampshire College is an experimental private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. ...

“I was headed nowhere like a hundred million others: I had escaped a malformed Jamaican middle class; I had attained my autumn pavement; I had done more than my fair share of hurting, rejecting, and condemning; and I had created another kind of failure, and this time, in another country.”

(from Escape To An Autmun Pavement)

Bibliography

• A Quality of Violence (novel, 1959)
• Escape to an Autumn Pavement (novel, 1960)
• West Indian Stories (editor, 1960)
• Hurricane (children's novel, 1964)
• Earthquake (children's novel, 1965)
• Stories from the Caribbean (editor, 1965)
• Commonwealth Poetry (editor West Indian section, 1965)
• Jamaica Symphony (long poem unpublished, winning Thomas Helmore Poetry Prize, 1955).

References

• Biography