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| Pamela
(Pam) Mordecai’s first poem was written when she was nine, about
a hurricane that hit the island of Jamaica in that year. She was born
and grew up there, “going to the nuns” at age four and leaving
them at age twenty-one. By then she had gone to the USA and had done a
first degree in English at a small Catholic college in Massachusetts that
she helped to integrate. Returning to Jamaica after college, she taught,
became involved in theatre and modern dance, and began writing seriously.
She went to the University of the West Indies to do two teaching degrees,
and eventually a PhD. (It took her sixteen years to write.) |
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A bit
of a hurricane herself, she he has been a teacher, a trainer of teachers,
a TV host, a sort of accountant, a writer-researcher, an editor, a book
packager and a publisher. She has written newspaper editorials, dance
criticism, textbooks, critical articles on Caribbean literature, studies
on Caribbean culture, education, and publishing, poems and stories for
children, poems and short stories for adults, and, recently, a play commissioned
by the LKTYP called “El Numero Uno or the Jonkonnu Pig from Lopinot”.
A prolific anthologist with a special interest in the writing of Caribbean
women, she has edited ground breaking anthologies including Jamaica
Woman (with Mervyn Morris), Her True-True Name (with Betty
Wilson) and From Our Yard: Jamaican Poetry since Independence.
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| Pam has published
sixteen textbooks, four collections of poetry, and five books (poetry
and stories) for children. In 2001, Greenwood Press (CT, USA) published
Culture and Customs of Jamaica, a reference work on Jamaica written
with her husband, Martin.The True Blue of Islands, her most recent
work, is dedicated to her brother, Richard, who was murdered in Jamaica
in 2004. Certifiable:Poems,was published in 2001 by Goose Lane
Editions. It received enthusiastic reviews in Canada, the Caribbean, the
UK and the US. Having recently completed a collection of short stories,
she is currently working on a novel. |
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| Pam and her husband
and three children migrated to Canada in 1993. She lives in Toronto where
she and Martin run Sandberry Press. She likes to garden and sometimes
does a bit of drawing and painting. |
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