Colin Channer
Encyclopedia
Colin Channer is a Jamaica
n writer, often referred to as "Bob Marley
with a pen," due to the spiritual, sensual, social themes presented from a literary Jamaican perspective. Indeed, his first two full length novels, Waiting in Vain and Satisfy My Soul, bear the titles of well known Marley songs. He has also written the short story collection Passing Through, and the novellas I’m Still Waiting" and "The Girl with the Golden Shoes." Some of his short stories have been anthologized.
) is the youngest of four children. He attended the Ardenne and Meadowbrook High
Schools where his writing career began with the penning of love poems and other such correspondence on behalf of male students at $1 a letter – poems costing an extra 50 cents. After high school, Channer migrated to New York
on July 24, 1982, intent on a career in journalism. But it was his discovery of Caryl Phillips
' The Final Passage that allowed him to see the possibilities of fiction writing from an authentic Caribbean
- specifically Jamaican - perspective. Channer went on to earn a B.A.
in Media Communications from CUNY Hunter College
.
In 1988, Channer moved to Atlanta, where he lived for three years working as a magazine journalist. He returned to New York
in 1991 after undergoing a cornea transplant to save his failing eyesight. He began writing his first novel on speculation then attempted to get it sold. In this time, he worked as a freelance copyeditor in various design firms and advertising agencies. He also wrote a collection of short stories and a screenplay without guarantee that any of them would be released. Two of the short stories were anthologized in Soulfires. In 1998, the novel was published as Waiting In Vain, which was selected as a Critic’s Choice by The Washington Post and hailed as a clear redefinition of the Caribbean novel. The novel, whose main characters were Jamaican, dealt with contemporary issues of class and identity in a multicultural context. Waiting in Vain was also excerpted in Hot Spots: The best erotic writing in Modern Fiction which placed Channer in the company of writers such as Russell Banks
, E. L. Doctorow
, Don DeLillo
, and David Foster Wallace
. Time Out, New York also selected this award-winning book as Book of the Summer.
The screenplay became the novella I'm Still Waiting, which was one of four anthologized stories in the volume Got To Be Real. The book itself was singular in that it was a collection by the leading black male writers of the day, the others being E. Lynn Harris
, Eric Jerome Dickey
, and Marcus Major.
Another of the short stories from that period was developed into his second novel, Satisfy My Soul. Released in 2002, Satisfy My Soul depicted the conflict between African spirituality and Christianity in the context of Black relationships.
Passing Through, published in 2004, is a collection of connected stories set on the fictional Caribbean island of San Carlos. The stories span the entire twentieth century and move in chronological order from 1903 till the present day.
, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
, V.S. Naipaul, John Updike
, and even Bob Marley
among his influences. Similar to Marley, Channer has established his literary style with an unapologetic sensuality, contemporary themes with profound thematic undercurrents, diverse backdrops such as Ghana
, London
, New York
, and Jamaica
, as well as dialogue steeped in Jamaican patois
. This has also caused many critics to deem him a reggae
writer.
In 2001, along with poet Kwame Dawes
, Channer also launched the Calabash International Literary Festival Trust, a registered not-for-profit entity whose mission is “to transform the literary arts in the Caribbean by being the region’s best-managed producer of workshops, seminars and performances.” The annual festival takes place each year at Jake’s in Treasure Beach, Jamaica.
Calabash has become the festival of choice for some of the world’s most gifted authors. 2005 launched The Calabash Chapbook Series, which, to date, includes six books of poems from workshop members. Of these, Ishion Hutchinson, was accepted into NYU’s creative writing master’s program. In July 2006, Akashic Books published the fiction anthology Iron Balloons: Hit Fiction from Jamaica's Calabash Writer's Workshop from the original workshop. Channer edited the volume, as well as contributing the short story How to Beat a Child the Right and Proper Way.
In addition to being the founder and artistic director of Calabash, Channer is the founder and bass player of the reggae band Pipecock Jaxxon. Channer has taught in London
, New York
, and Jamaica
. He was an assistant professor of English and coordinator of the B.A.
creative writing
program at CUNY Medgar Evers College
and is currently a Newhouse Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at Wellesley College. A dual citizen of Jamaica
and the United States
, Channer lives with his family in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn
, NY.
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
n writer, often referred to as "Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
with a pen," due to the spiritual, sensual, social themes presented from a literary Jamaican perspective. Indeed, his first two full length novels, Waiting in Vain and Satisfy My Soul, bear the titles of well known Marley songs. He has also written the short story collection Passing Through, and the novellas I’m Still Waiting" and "The Girl with the Golden Shoes." Some of his short stories have been anthologized.
Early life
Colin Channer (born October 13, 1963 in Kingston, JamaicaKingston, Jamaica
Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects the town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley International Airport to the rest of the island...
) is the youngest of four children. He attended the Ardenne and Meadowbrook High
Meadowbrook High School, Jamaica
Meadowbrook High School is a government-aided, co-educational, first-to-sixth form, secondary school located in the community of Meadowbrook in the parish of St. Andrew, Jamaica...
Schools where his writing career began with the penning of love poems and other such correspondence on behalf of male students at $1 a letter – poems costing an extra 50 cents. After high school, Channer migrated to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
on July 24, 1982, intent on a career in journalism. But it was his discovery of Caryl Phillips
Caryl Phillips
Caryl Phillips is a British writer with a Caribbean background, best known as a novelist. He is now professor at Yale University and a visiting professor at Barnard College of Columbia University.-Life:...
' The Final Passage that allowed him to see the possibilities of fiction writing from an authentic Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
- specifically Jamaican - perspective. Channer went on to earn a B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in Media Communications from CUNY Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
.
In 1988, Channer moved to Atlanta, where he lived for three years working as a magazine journalist. He returned to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
in 1991 after undergoing a cornea transplant to save his failing eyesight. He began writing his first novel on speculation then attempted to get it sold. In this time, he worked as a freelance copyeditor in various design firms and advertising agencies. He also wrote a collection of short stories and a screenplay without guarantee that any of them would be released. Two of the short stories were anthologized in Soulfires. In 1998, the novel was published as Waiting In Vain, which was selected as a Critic’s Choice by The Washington Post and hailed as a clear redefinition of the Caribbean novel. The novel, whose main characters were Jamaican, dealt with contemporary issues of class and identity in a multicultural context. Waiting in Vain was also excerpted in Hot Spots: The best erotic writing in Modern Fiction which placed Channer in the company of writers such as Russell Banks
Russell Banks
Russell Banks is an American writer of fiction and poetry.- Biography :Russell Banks was born in Newton, Massachusetts on March 28, 1940. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in upstate New York, and has been named a New York State Author. He is also...
, E. L. Doctorow
E. L. Doctorow
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow is an American author.- Biography :Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent...
, Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo
Don DeLillo is an American author, playwright, and occasional essayist whose work paints a detailed portrait of American life in the late 20th and early 21st centuries...
, and David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
. Time Out, New York also selected this award-winning book as Book of the Summer.
The screenplay became the novella I'm Still Waiting, which was one of four anthologized stories in the volume Got To Be Real. The book itself was singular in that it was a collection by the leading black male writers of the day, the others being E. Lynn Harris
E. Lynn Harris
Everette "E." Lynn Harris was an American author. Openly gay, he was best known for his depictions of African American men who were on the down-low and closeted...
, Eric Jerome Dickey
Eric Jerome Dickey
Eric Jerome Dickey is a New York Times best-selling American author best known for his novels about contemporary African-American life...
, and Marcus Major.
Another of the short stories from that period was developed into his second novel, Satisfy My Soul. Released in 2002, Satisfy My Soul depicted the conflict between African spirituality and Christianity in the context of Black relationships.
Passing Through, published in 2004, is a collection of connected stories set on the fictional Caribbean island of San Carlos. The stories span the entire twentieth century and move in chronological order from 1903 till the present day.
Literary Style
Channer has cited Naguib MahfouzNaguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...
, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
, V.S. Naipaul, John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
, and even Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
among his influences. Similar to Marley, Channer has established his literary style with an unapologetic sensuality, contemporary themes with profound thematic undercurrents, diverse backdrops such as Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
, as well as dialogue steeped in Jamaican patois
Patois
Patois is any language that is considered nonstandard, although the term is not formally defined in linguistics. It can refer to pidgins, creoles, dialects, and other forms of native or local speech, but not commonly to jargon or slang, which are vocabulary-based forms of cant...
. This has also caused many critics to deem him a reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
writer.
Additional Ventures
Although he is best known as a novelist, Colin Channer’s influence has reached beyond the world of literature to touch the public with his words in other ways. In 2001, he was named as co-creative director of Eziba, a leading retailer of global craft. After his successes with Eziba, he launched his own design and branding firm, Squad 1962. Based in Chelsea, Squad 1962 was retained by Island Outpost, the collection of boutique hotels created by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who launched the global careers of musicians such as Bob Marley, U2 and Melissa Etheridge.In 2001, along with poet Kwame Dawes
Kwame Dawes
Kwame Senu Neville Dawes is a poet, actor, editor, critic, musician, and Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. He currently works as editor-in-chief at the Prairie Schooner. -Life:...
, Channer also launched the Calabash International Literary Festival Trust, a registered not-for-profit entity whose mission is “to transform the literary arts in the Caribbean by being the region’s best-managed producer of workshops, seminars and performances.” The annual festival takes place each year at Jake’s in Treasure Beach, Jamaica.
Calabash has become the festival of choice for some of the world’s most gifted authors. 2005 launched The Calabash Chapbook Series, which, to date, includes six books of poems from workshop members. Of these, Ishion Hutchinson, was accepted into NYU’s creative writing master’s program. In July 2006, Akashic Books published the fiction anthology Iron Balloons: Hit Fiction from Jamaica's Calabash Writer's Workshop from the original workshop. Channer edited the volume, as well as contributing the short story How to Beat a Child the Right and Proper Way.
In addition to being the founder and artistic director of Calabash, Channer is the founder and bass player of the reggae band Pipecock Jaxxon. Channer has taught in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
. He was an assistant professor of English and coordinator of the B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
program at CUNY Medgar Evers College
Medgar Evers College
Medgar Evers College is a senior college of The City University of New York.Medgar Evers College was officially established in 1970 through cooperation from educators and community leaders in central Brooklyn...
and is currently a Newhouse Visiting Professor in Creative Writing at Wellesley College. A dual citizen of Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Channer lives with his family in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, NY.
List of Publications
- Soulfires: Young Black Men on Love and Violence, with the short stories "Black Boy, Brown Girl, Brownstone" & "The Ballad of the Sad Chanteuse" (Penguin, 1996)
- Waiting In Vain (One World/Ballantine, 1998)
- Got To Be Real, with the novella "I'm Still Waiting", (New American Library, 2000)
- Satisfy My Soul (One World/Ballantine, 2002)
- Passing Through (One World/Ballantine, 2004)
- Iron Balloons (Akashic Books, 2006)
- The Girl with the Golden Shoes (Akashic Books, 2007)
External links
- http://www.eziba.com
- http://www.squad1962.com