The 1990 Neustadt International Prize for Literature: Jurors and Candidates

Abstract

Cyril Dabydeen was born in 1945 in Berbice, Guyana, worked briefly as a schoolteacher in Guyana in the late 1960s, and emigrated to Canada in 1970. He earned M.A. degrees in English and public administration from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and for many years taught creative writing and literature at universities and colleges in and around Ottawa, where he continues to reside and work. His first collection of verse, Poems in Recession, was published in Guyana in 1972. Subsequent volumes, all issued in Canada, include Distances (1977), This Planet Earth (1980), Islands Lovelier Than a Vision (1986), Coastland: New and Selected Poems ip/j-ip8/ (1989), Stoning the Wind (1994), and Discussing Columbus (1997), the last prefaced with great admiration and praise by (1994 Neustadt laureate) Kamau Brathwaite. Beginning with Still Close to the Island in 1980, Dabydeen has published several collections of stories as well, among them To Monkey Jungle (1988), Jogging in Havana (1992), and Berbice Crossing and Other Stories (1996); and he has also produced two novels: The Wizard Swami (1985) and Dark Swirl (1989). For his work, he has been honored with several prestigious literary prizes, including Guyana's highest poetry distinction, the Sardbach Parker Gold Medal, and between 1984 and 1987 he served as poet laureate of the city of Ottawa. Since 1989, his critical writing has included several reviews and articles for WLT, most recently Places We Come From: Voices of Caribbean Canadian Writers (in English) and Multicultural Contexts in a special number on contemporary Canadian literatures (Spring 1999), and the autobiographical sketch Where Doth the Berbice Run (Summer 1994). Candidate: Wilson Harris