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.
