Michael Anthony (author)
- This article is about the author. For other uses, see Michael Anthony (disambiguation)).
Michael Anthony, an eminent Caribbean author and historian, was born in Mayaro, Trinidad and Tobago on February 10, 1932 to Nathaniel Anthony and Eva Jones Lazarus.
Anthony was educated at Mayaro Roman Catholic School and Junior Technical College, San Fernando, Trinidad. He subsequently took a job as a foundry worker in Pointe-à-Pierre for five years but had ambitions to become a journalist, and poems of his were published by the Trinidad Guardian in 1953. Yet it was not enough for him to secure a new job locally and Anthony decided to further his career in the United Kingdom. His voyage there on board the Hildebrandt took place in December 1954. In England he held several jobs including as a sub-editor at Reuters news agency (1964-8), while developing his career as a writer, writing short stories for the BBC radio programme "Caribbean Voices".
In 1958 he married Yvette Phillip (a poet) and they had four children — Jennifer, Keith, Carlos and Sandra.
Four years later, Anthony published his first book, The Games Were Coming, a cycling story inspired by real events. He followed up its success with The Year in San Fernando and Green Days by the River. He eventually returned to Trinidad in 1970 (after spending two years as part of the Trinidadian diplomatic corps in Brazil, where his novel King of the Masquerade is set) and worked variously as an editor, a researcher for the Ministry of Culture, and as a radio broadcaster of historical programmes. In 1992, he spent time at the University of Richmond in Virginia teaching creative writing.
In his five-decade career, Anthony has had over 30 titles published, including novels, collections of short fiction, books for younger readers, travelogues and histories. He has also been a contributor to many anthologies and journals, including Caribbean Prose, Island Voices - Stories from the Caribbean, Response, The Sun's Eyes, West Indian Narrative, The Bajan, and BIM magazine.
In 1979 he was awarded the Hummingbird Medal (Gold) for his contributions to Literature, and he received an honorary doctorate from the University of the West Indies (UWI) in 2003.
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[edit] Awards
- 1967: Arts Council of Great Britain Fellowship
- 1979: Trinidad & Tobago's Hummingbird Gold Medal
- 2003: honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.), UWI
[edit] Bibliography
- The Games Were Coming (1963)
- The Year in San Fernando (1965; revised edition 1970)
- Green Days by the River (1967)
- Tales for Young and Old (1967)
- Sandra Street and Other Stories (1973)
- Cricket in the Road (1973)
- King of the Masquerade (1974)
- Glimpses of Trinidad and Tobago (1974)
- Profile Trinidad (1974)
- Streets of Conflict (1976)
- Folk Tales and Fantasies (1976)
- The Making of Port of Spain (1978)
- All That Glitters (1981) (cited by the author as his favourite)
- Bright Road to El Dorado (1983)
- A Better and Brighter Day (1988)
- The Becket Factor (1990)
- The Golden Quest: The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1992)
- The Chieftain's Carnival and Other Stories(1993)
- In the Heat of the Day (1996)
- Historical Dictionary of Trinidad and Tobago (1997)
- High Tide of Intrigue (2001)
- Town and Villages of Trinidad and Tobago (2001)
[edit] Further reading
- Kenneth Ramchand, "Novels of Childhood" in The West Indian Novel and Its Background. London: Faber, and New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970.
- James Brockway, Books and Bookmen, February 1974.
- World Literature Today, Spring 1997, p. 445.
- Americas, November/December 1997, p. 63.
- Michael Anthony: A Giant Among Us by Shamshu Deen, Independent, July 28, 2000 [1].
