Samuel Selvon: A Life in Pictures
Samuel Selvon Timeline
Samuel Selvon: A Brief Biography of a Trinidadian Expatriate
Samuel Selvon was born on May 20, 1923 in Trinidad, the sixth of seven children born to Bertwyn Selvon, an Indian cocoa merchant, and Daisy Dickson, a biracial Anglo-Indian. Selvon grew up in a middle-class home; after he completed his primary education in 1937, he attended Naparima College. However, Selvon left the college in 1938, without taking the school certificate examination. He enlisted in the Trinidad Royal Navy Reserve in 1939 and became a wireless operator. Thereafter, he moved to the Port of Spain where he worked for the Trinidad Guardian. He also wrote stories and columns under several pseudonyms, including Ack-Ack, Michael Wentworth, and Esses. In 1947, Selvon married Draupadi Persaud, with whom he had one child, born after the couple relocated to London in 1950. In London, Selvon worked as a clerk for the Indian Embassy, and wrote in his spare time. His first novel, A Brighter Sun, was published in 1952. This debut novel was followed by the publication of several more novels (including The Lonely Londoners in 1956), a collection of short stories entitled Ways of Sunlight (1958), and a collection of plays named Highway in the Sun (1991). In 1962, Selvon and Persaud divorced, and in 1963, Selvon married Althea Daroux, with whom he had three children. From 1975-1977, Selvon held a fellowship in creative writing at Dundee University. In 1978, Selvon moved to Canada, where Daroux had relatives. He took up writer-in-residence appointments at the universities of Victoria, Winnipeg, Alberta, and Calgary (where he worked for a few months as a janitor when he first arrived in Canada). A lifelong smoker, Selvon died of respiratory failure due to chronic lung disease on April 16, 1994.
Monica Ali: A Life in Pictures
The Life of Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen is a British filmmaker and artist. McQueen was born on October 9, 1969 in Ealing, a district in West London. His parents are both Caribbean immigrants, his mother from Trinidad and his father from Grenada. McQueen attended Drayton Manor High School in Ealing. McQueen has reflected on the racist policies that relegated him and other students with learning challenges (McQueen was dyslexic) to an academic track for those supposedly destined for manual labor. “At 13 years old, you are marked, you are dead, that’s your future,” McQueen said. Nevertheless, he found his love and skill for visual arts, which granted him access to more educational opportunities. McQueen attended Chelsea College of Art and then Goldsmiths College at the University of London, which he graduated from in 1993. At Goldsmiths, McQueen also began to explore his passion for film. That spark led him to the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Dissatisfied with the stiff approach to filmmaking, McQueen left Tisch after three months. McQueen’s films have explored a wide range of issues, from the 1981 Irish hunger strike to American slavery to the lives of Caribbean immigrants in London. McQueen has won numerous awards for his art and filmmaking, including the Turner Prize in 1999 for Deadpan, OBE and CBE medals, the 2008 Caméra d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Hunger, and an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 2014 Oscars for 12 Years a Slave. McQueen’s most recent work, Small Axe, is an anthology film series depicting Black British life from the 1960s to the 1980s. McQueen lives in Amsterdam with his wife and two children.
Steve McQueen Timeline
Steve McQueen Image Gallery
Monica Ali: Important Events and Moments
A short collection of events and moments that have defined Monica Ali’s life thus far.
An Overnight Success: A Brief Biography of Monica Ali
Monica Ali is an award-winning, best-selling writer. She is most renowned for her breakthrough novel Brick Lane, which brought attention to the Bangladeshi immigrant experience in London.
Ali is the daughter of English and Bangladeshi parents and was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1967. In 1971, aged three, Ali’s family moved to Bolton, England, in order to escape the civil war that erupted in Pakistan. After attending the Bolton School, she studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University and graduated from Wadham College. She then entered the field of publishing, working in the marketing department of a small publishing house before moving into sales and marketing management positions at the publishing house Verso. Ali married a consultant, Simon Torrance, and gave birth to her first child in 1999. She subsequently begun to experiment with writing fiction, but soon found that short stories did not suit her. After giving birth to her second child in 2001, Ali’s father died. His death prompted her to begin work on her first novel, “Brick Lane”. It was published in 2003 to critical acclaim and was adapted into a film released in 2007. Ali now lives in London with her family.
