Grace Nichols

Grace Nichols (born January 18, 1950 in Georgetown (Guyana) ) is a Guyanese-British writer.

Life

Nichols studied communication science at the University of Guyana and worked as a teacher and journalist. In 1977 she emigrated to Great Britain. She is successful both as a poet and as a children's book author. She won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for her first volume of poetry, I is a Long-Memoried Woman . In her poems she connects the cultural traditions of Europe and the Caribbean, British English and Creole forms, and thematizes the life experiences of black women, past and present.

Nichols has two daughters and now lives with her husband, the Guyanese writer John Agard , in Lewes in the south of England .

Works

• I is a Long-Memoried Woman (Poems, 1983)
• The Fat Black Woman's Poems (Poems, 1984)
• A Dangerous Knowing: Four Black Women Poets (Barbara Burford, Gabriela Pearse, Grace Nichols, Jackie Kay, 1985)
• Whole of a Morning Sky (novel, 1986, German title: Morgenhimmel , translated by Utta Roy-Seifert 1996)
• Over the River (1986)
• Hurricane Hits England (1987)
• Come into my Tropical Garden (poems, 1988)
• Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Woman (Poems, 1989)
• Sunris (poems, 1996)
• Startling the Flying Fish (2006)
• Picasso, I Want My Face Back (2009)
• I Have Crossed an Ocean: Selected Poems (Poems, 2010)
• Island Man

Prices

• 1983: Commonwealth Poetry Prize (for I is a Long Memoried Woman )
• 1986: Arts Council of Great Britain Writers' Award
• 1996: Guyana Poetry Prize (for Sunris )
• 2001: Cholmondeley Award
• since 2007: Member of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2008: Guyana Poetry Award Never live unloved

source

• Jana Gohrisch: Nichols, Grace . In: Authors Lexicon. Ed. V. Ute Hechtfischer, Renate Hof, Inge Stephan and Flora Veit-Wild. Frankfurt / M. Suhrkamp 2002, p. 387f. ISBN 3518399187