The PREE community is comprised of some of the most exciting voices in Caribbean writing. We are pleased to announce a robust roster of authors, each of whom will lead their own writing studio over the course of our four-day workshop.
Kei Miller
Kei Miller is a poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer and a broadcaster. His 2014 collection The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion won the Forward Prize for Best Collection. In April 2017 he won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for his novel Augustown. In 2010, the Institute of Jamaica awarded him the Silver Musgrave medal for his contributions to Literature.
His poetry has also been shortlisted for awards such as the Jonathan Llewelyn Rhys Prize, the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year. His fiction has won the Una Marson Prize and has been shortlisted for the Phyllis Wheatley Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Formerly an International Writing Fellow at the University of Iowa, a Visiting Writer at York University in Canada, a Reader at the University of Glasgow (until 2014), and a lecturer at Royal Holloway, he is currently a Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Exeter. In 2018 he is a Judge of the Gordon Burn Prize.
Leone Ross
Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer and editor. Her fiction has been nominated for the Women’s Prize, the Goldsmiths award, the RSL Ondaatje award, and the Edge Hill Prize, among others. In 2022, she won the Manchester Prize for Fiction for her short story, ‘When We Went Gallivanting’. The Guardian has praised her ‘searing empathy’ and the Times Literary Supplement called her ‘a pointilliste, a master of detail…’ Ross has taught creative writing for 20 years, up to PhD level. Her third novel, This One Sky Day aka Popisho was published in 2021 (Faber & Faber). She is the editor of Glimpse: A Black British Anthology of Speculative Fiction (2022, Peepal Tree Press).
Ishion Hutchinson
Ishion Hutchinson was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica. He is the author of three poetry collections, School of Instructions (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, November 2023), House of Lords and Commons (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016) and Far District: Poems (Peepal Tree Press Ltd., 2010, reissue 2024 by FSG). His first book of essays, Fugitive Tilts, will be published in 2024 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. A finalist for the L.A. Times Book Review for Poetry, Hutchinson’s other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Civitella Ranieri Writing Fellowship, the Susannah Hunnewell Prize from The Paris Review and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among others.
Ingrid Persaud
Ingrid Persaud was born in Trinidad. Her debut novel, Love After Love, won the Costa First Novel Award 2020, Author’s Club First Novel Award 2021, Indie Book Awards for Fiction 2021. She also won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2018 and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017. Her next novel The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh is published by Faber on 25th April 2024. Follow her on Twitter @IngridPersaud.
Garnette Cadogan
Garnette Cadogan is an essayist whose research explores the promise and perils of urban life, the vitality and inequality of cities, and the challenges of pluralism. Named by the literary magazine Freeman’s as one of 29 writers from around the world who “represent the future of new writing” in 2017, he writes about culture and the arts for various publications.
Cadogan is the Tunney Lee Distinguished Lecturer in Urbanism. He was a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Scholar (2017-2018) at DUSP, and is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University and a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. The editor-at-large of Non-Stop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas (co-edited by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro), he is at work on a book on walking.
Shivanee Ramlochan
Shivanee Ramlochan is a Trinidadian writer. Her debut, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting (Peepal Tree Press, 2017), was shortlisted for a 2018 Forward Prize for Poetry. Recently, her poems have been anthologized in 100 Queer Poems (Faber); After Sylvia: Poems and Essays in Celebration of Sylvia Plath (Nine Arches Press); Across Borders: An Anthology of New Poetry from the Commonwealth (Verve Poetry Press); Bi+ Lines: An Anthology of Contemporary Bi+ Poems (fourteen poems).
Shivanee was a 2019 John Ciardi Poetry Fellow at Bread Loaf Writers Conference; a 2019 Millay Arts Poetry alumna; and a 2020 Catapult Arts Residency awardee. She is currently Translation Selector for the Poetry Book Society, and has worked in Caribbean literary development for thirteen years. The Spanish edition of Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting (Todos saben que soy una aparición) is in development, and Shivanee’s second book, Unkillable, on Indo-Caribbean women’s disobedience, is forthcoming.
Sharmaine Lovegrove
Sharmaine Lovegrove is the Managing Director of Dialogue Books, a brand-new division of Hachette UK with the remit of Inclusion, Inspiration and Innovation, the publishing division is a home for a variety of stories from illuminating voices often missing from the mainstream. Sharmaine was the recipient of the Future Book Publishing Person of the Year 2018/19 and is inspired by innovative storytelling, and has worked in public relations, bookselling, events management and TV and Film scouting. She was the literary editor of ELLE and established a bookshop and creative agency in Berlin.
Sharmaine serves on the boards of The Black Cultural Archives and Bookshop.org UK and is a founding organiser of The Black Writers Guild. Home is London, she lives in Berlin and her roots are Jamaican – Sharmaine is proud to be part of the African diaspora and books make her feel part of the world.
Twitter @sharlovegrove @dialoguepub
Instagram @shar_love_ @dialoguepublishing
Website www.dialoguebooks.co.uk
Express Interest
We are currently accepting applications to the Pree 2024 Writing Studio! To express interest, please email a short sample of your work to preewritingstudio@gmail.com or preeliteditors@gmail.com, with Pree Writing Studio 2024 in the subject line. In the body of the email indicate a ranking of which writing studio you would like to participate in. Based on the quality of work, we will invite approximately 25-30 applicants to join us in May in Kingston. Pree staff will place you in a writing studio based on preference, availability, and best fit.
PREE Writing Studio 