15 Facts About Andrew Salkey

Andrew Salkey was a Jamaican novelist, poet, children's books writer and journalist of Jamaican and Panamanian origin.

Andrew Salkey was born in Panama but was raised in Jamaica, moving to Britain in the 1952 to pursue a job in the literary world, combining a job in a South London comprehensive school teaching English with a job working on the door of a West End night club.

The 1960s and 1970s saw Salkey working as a broadcaster for the BBC World Service, Caribbean section.

Andrew Salkey died in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he had been teaching since the 1970s, holding a lifetime position as writer-in-residence at Hampshire College.

Andrew Salkey was born as Felix Andrew Alexander Salkey in Colon, Panama, to Jamaican parents, Andrew Alexander Salkey, a businessman, and Linda Marshall Salkey.

When two years old, Andrew Salkey was sent to Jamaica, where he was raised by his grandmother and his mother, who worked there as a teacher, while his father continued to work in Panama.

Andrew Salkey was educated at St George's College, in Kingston, and at Munro College, in St Elizabeth, before going to England in the early 1950s to attend the College of St Mark and St John.

Andrew Salkey was a part of the West Indian Students Union, which provided an effective forum for Caribbean students to express their ideas and provided voluntary support to the "harassed" working-class Caribbean immigrant community, during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

That same year Andrew Salkey edited one of the first anthologies of Caribbean short stories, West Indian Stories, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of folklore and popular culture.

Thereafter, Andrew Salkey concentrated on writing poetry and reworking tales of Caribbean folklore.

Andrew Salkey was good friends with Austin Clarke, and the two had a long correspondence, a great deal of which is available in Clarke's files at the McMaster University Archives in Hamilton, Ontario.

The settings of Andrew Salkey's novels show a constant back and forth between his country of origin and the countries in which he lived.

Andrew Salkey was a director and constant supporter of the London-based publishing company Bogle-L'Ouverture founded by Guyanese-born Jessica Huntley, who organised a two-day symposium and celebration called "Andrew Salkey's Score".

Andrew Salkey had been ailing for some time before his death, aged 67, on the morning of 28 April 1995, while in an ambulance on the way to Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts.

On 29 March 2013, Paul Gilroy was meant to attend the Andrew Salkey Memorial Reading, at the Hampshire College Cultural Center, but could not due to adverse weather conditions.