Author Description

It is now almost forty years since David Dabydeen published his first creative work - a collection of poetry entitled Slave Song (1984) - which won both the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and the Quiller-Couch Prize. Since then there have been two further collections of poetry: Coolie Odyssey (1988) and the long narrative poem Turner (1994), as well as seven novels. Dabydeen's first novel, The Intended, was published in 1991, followed by Disappearance (1993), The Counting House (1996), A Harlot's Progress (1999), Our Lady of Demerara (2004), Molly and the Muslim Stick (2008) and Johnson's Dictionary (2013). Like his first collection of poetry, several of his novels have attracted critical acclaim and awards. The Intended won the Guyana Prize for Literature in 1992; The Counting House was shortlisted for the 1998 Dublin Literary Prize; A Harlot's Progress was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and also a winner of the Guyana Prize for Literature; and Our Lady of Demerara won Dabydeen's third Guyana Prize for Literature in 2004. Like Diamonds From Dirt contains a collection of scholarly articles that have been designed to give some insights into different aspects of Dabydeen's fictional writing. The essays range in content from a newly commissioned article which takes us back to Dabydeen's first poetry publication, Slave Song, to essays on three of his most popular novels. The second part of Like Diamonds From Dirt shifts focus away from critical analyses of Dabydeen's writing to a more intimate look behind the works through the transcripts of three interviews with the author himself. Their diverse range of topics serves to highlight the fact that his often provocative style of fictional writing will surely continue to challenge the reader and critic alike.