The Department of Literatures in English (DLIE) announces the award-winning and critically acclaimed Jamaican writer, Dr Sharma Taylor, as Writer-in-Residence for the period of Semester 2, 2024.

The author of the novel, What A Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You (2022) published by Virago Press, UK, Dr Taylor is the winner of the 2020 Queen Mary University of London, Wasafiri New Writing Prize, the 2020 Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award and the inaugural 2019 Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize   from Bocas Lit Fest. Her work also won second prize in the 2020 First Novel Prize, organised by Daniel Goldsmith Associates Ltd. Dr Taylor has been short/longlisted for numerous literary prizes and awards, including the recently announced V.S. Prichett Short Story Prize for her story, “The three deaths of Nina Carmichael”. She was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize no less than four times.  Dr Taylor has also been announced as a 2023 Musgrave Medal awardee for Literature in the Bronze category.

A proud UWI graduate and corporate attorney, Dr Taylor holds an LLB and LLM from The UWI, and a PhD in Copyright Law from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She has received extensive training in creative writing, and as Writer-in-Residence is responsible for the delivery of the Level 2 course, “Creative Writing: Prose Fiction”. The post of Writer-in-Residence is intended to help develop the department’s creative writing programme and provide mentorship for aspiring writers in the UWI undergraduate community.

On March 21, Dr Taylor will read at “Love Affair with Literature”, one of the department’s signature activities. She will be joined on the stage by poet and journalist, Mel Cooke, author of the poetry collection 11/9 (Blouse and Skirt Books, 2008). The event will also feature a special tribute to the late Professor Emeritus, Edward Baugh, directed by Eugene Williams and Carolyn Allen.

“Love Affair” begins at 5.30 p.m. and will be held in the Neville Hall Lecture Theatre (N1), UWI, Mona. It will be preceded by another DLIE signature event, “Poetry Clash”, a poetry competition featuring the performance of unpublished poems, at 2.30 p.m. in the Faculty of Humanities and Education courtyard. All are welcome.