pam mordecai BIOGRAPHY

 

 

 

 

 

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.)

A bit of a hurricane herself, she he has been a teacher, a trainer of teachers, a TV host, 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. A play, “El Numero Uno or the Pig from Lopinot,” commissioned by the Lorraine Kimsa Young People’s Theatre, will have its world premiere in their 2009-2010 season. (See http://www.lktyp.ca/) A prolific anthologist with a special interest in the writing of Caribbean women, she has edited ground breaking anthologies such as Jamaica Woman (with Mervyn Morris), Her True-True Name (with Betty Wilson), and From Our Yard: Jamaican Poetry since Independence. Her most recent anthology is Calling Cards: New Poetry from Caribbean/ Canadian Women.

Pam has published numerous textbooks, many co-authored by the late Grace Walker Gordon, her writing partner for 25 years, as well as five books for children. Journey Poem, her first collection of poetry, was published by Sandberry Press in 1989. De Man A Performance Poem, an eyewitness account of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ written in Jamaican Creole published by Sister Vision Press in 1995 continues to be performed in Canada and the Caribbean – most recently in Calgary in 2009 – to enthusiastic audiences. Certifiable: Poems, was published in 2001 by Goose Lane Editions. The True Blue of Islands which appeared in 2005, is a collection of poems dedicated to her brother, Richard, who was murdered in Jamaica in 2004.

Pink Icing: stories, a collection of prose fiction, was published by Insomniac Press in 2006. It received excellent reviews in Canada, the US and the Caribbean. Pam has just completed a novel and is working on Cold Comfort, a second collection of short stories, and a book of sonnets called Litany on the Line.

She has received numerous awards for her writing including the Institute of Jamaica’s Centenary Medal, Jamaica’s first Vic Reid Award for children’s writing (1993) and the Burla Award (2005) for her contribution to Caribbean literature. She has also received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council in support of her writing. Pam and her husband and three children migrated to Canada in 1993. She lives in Toronto.