Sam Selvon

Born in Trinidad in 1923 to Indian parents, Sam Selvon was the sixth of seven children. After attending school in his hometown of San Fernando, he started working for the Royal Naval Reserve when he was only fifteen. After five years as a radio operator for the Reserve, he relocated to Port of Spain, where he was a reporter and occasional literary writer for the Trinidad Guardian. It was during his time as a newspaperman that he started writing seriously, though he often used pseudonyms. Moving to London in the 1950s, he took a job as a clerk at the Indian Embassy and wrote during his time off, which he used to pen poems and short stories that eventually went on to be published in various British journals. He also published his first novel, A Brighter Sun, in 1952, shortly after arriving in England, but his most widely-known work, The Lonely Londoners, came out four years later. Throughout his career, he wrote thirteen books and two collections of plays. He also married twice and had four children between both marriages. In the 1970s he moved to Canada, where he remained until dying at the age of 70 during a visit to Trinidad.