Austin Clarke

Austin Clarke

Austin Clarke was born in 1934 on the island of Barbados. He taught at a rural school for three years before leaving for Canada in 1955 to attend Trinity College. Two years later, he dropped out of school and began working as a journalist and broadcaster. He taught creative writing at several American universities and served as cultural attache to the Barbadian embassy in Washington, D.C..

Clarke returned to Canada in 1976 and ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the Ontario election of the following year. He also served on the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada from 1988 to 1993. Austin Clarke currently lives in Toronto.

Austin Clarke discusses “More,” his Toronto Book Award winning novel.

Bibliography

Novels

• The Survivors of the Crossing (1964)
• Amongst Thistles and Thorns (1965)
• The Meeting Point (1967)
• Storm of Fortune (1973)
• The Bigger Light (1975)
• The Prime Minister (1977)
• Proud Empires (1988)
• The Origin of Waves (1997, winner of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize)
• The Question (1999, nominated for a Governor General’s Award)
• The Polished Hoe (2002, winner of the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize)
• More (2008)

Short stories

• When He Was Free and Young and He Used to Wear Silks (1971)
• When Women Rule (1985)
• Nine Men Who Laughed (1986)
• In This City (1992)
• There Are No Elders (1993)
• Choosing His Coffin (2003)

Non-fiction

• Growing Up Stupid Under the Union Jack (1980)
• Public Enemies: Police Violence and Black Youth (1992)
• A Passage Back Home: A Personal Reminiscence of Samuel Selvon (1994)
• Pigtails ‘n’ Breadfruit (1999)
• A Stranger In A Strange Land