Lannan Foundation

Derek Walcott was born in St. Lucia, West Indies, in 1930, and educated at the University of the West Indies. After university, he was awarded a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study American theater. A poet, playwright, and essayist, his creative works are informed by Caribbean, English and African traditions. He has been honored with awards and prizes in each of those disciplines including the Queen's Medal for Poetry, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, an Obie in 1971 for his play, Dream on Monkey Mountain which deals with a man's search for cultural identity in the face of colonialism, and in 1992, the Nobel Prize for Literature. Mr. Walcott teaches poetry and playwriting during the fall semester at Boston University and lives in St. Lucia.

Derek Walcott Bio and Cross Links

Glyn Maxwell was born in England in 1962 and took a degree in English at Oxford University. He then received a scholarship to Boston University where he studied poetry and theater with Derek Walcott. He has been the poetry editor at the New Republic since 2001 and his more recent books include The Sugar Mile, The Breakage, Time's Fool: A Tale in Verse, and The Nerve. Maxwell is also a playwright, novelist, and an opera librettist.

Glyn Maxwell Bio and Cross Links