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Earl Lovelace was born in 1935
in Toco and was sent to live in Tobago when he was still very young. He
rejoined his family in Toco at age 11 and moved with them to Belmont,
and then to Morvant.
His first job was as a proof-reader
at the Trinidad Guardian. He soon relocated to Valencia where he was stationed
as a forest ranger. It was there that he spent many a solitary hour writing.
He moved even further, to Rio Claro, where he took up a post as an agricultural
officer.
In 1964, the literary world sat
up and noticed his talent, when he won the Trinidad and Tobago Independence
Literary Award with a manuscript that became his first novel, While
Gods are Falling, which was published in 1965. In 1967, Lovelace was
awarded an MA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland,
USA.
In 1968 he published his second novel The Schoolmaster. The
Dragon Can't Dance was published in 1979. A collection of his
plays, Jestina's Calypso, was published in 1984. The Wine of
Astonishment was published in 1982. A Brief Conversation
and Other Stories was published in 1988. Crawfie the Crapaud
was published in 1997. He won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1997 for
his novel Salt.
He was also a noted playwright,
and during the seventies he wrote productions and hosted drama workshops
for Matura presentations in the Prime Minister's Best Village Trophy competition.
He served on the Best Village Management committee during the NAR government,
and the Best Village Revival 2002 committee. He also served on the Cumuto
Village Council.
He has lectured since 1978 at
the University of West Indies, St. Augustine, lectured at Wellesley College
in Massachusetts, and is currently Writer in Residence at Pacific Lutheran
University in Tacoma. In 1988 he was awarded a Chaconia Gold
Medal for Literature. In 2002 he was honoured by the Best Village Revival
Committee for his contribution to the Prime Minister's Best Village Competition.
In November 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University
of the West Indies.
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