Anita Baksh

Lakshmi Persaud was born in 1939 in Tunapuna, Trinidad. With the exception of a short period in Jamaica, she has lived in the United Kingdom since the mid-1970s. Through the  publication of four novels—Butterfly in the Wind (1990), Sastra (1993), For the Love of My Name (1999), and Raise the Lanterns High (2004)—Persaud has established herself as a significant writer in the areas of literature of the Indian diaspora and Caribbean literature; she is currently working on a fifth novel. In the following conversation, which was recorded in London in August 2009, Lakshmi Persaud discusses her writing, her influences, and her experiences of living in Trinidad and the United Kingdom. The interview has been condensed.

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Barrington M. Salmon

Anthony Williams was born in Castries, Saint Lucia, and from a young age he set out to pursue his dream of becoming a writer. He began as a news reporter with the Government Information Service in 1977, soon after leaving secondary school, but a few years later he left journalism to take over the management of a family-owned banana plantation. After ten years, he returned to journalism and went on to become the editor of the Crusader, a newspaper in Saint Lucia. He was subsequently awarded a Reuters Fellowship in journalism at Green College, Oxford University. In 2007, he gave up full-time journalism to devote more time to creative writing. Along with freelance journalism, he does consultancy work and speechwriting part-time. He is the creator of Caribbean Book Blog and he recently published his first novel, Forbidden (e-book, 2011; see his post on the publication here). The following interview took place over the course of several weeks in December 2008 and January 2009 in a series of online exchanges. (more…)