Quince Duncan was born in 1940 in San José

San José, Costa Rica

San José is the capital and largest city of Costa Rica. Located in the Central Valley, San José is the seat of national government, the focal point of political and economic activity, and the major transportation hub of this Central American nation.Founded in 1738 by order of Cabildo de León, San...

, Costa Rica

Costa Rica

Costa Rica , officially the Republic of Costa Rica is a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the west and the Caribbean Sea to the east....

. He is regarded as Costa Rica's first Afro-Caribbean writer in the Spanish language

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

. His works typically concern the Afro-caribbean population living on Costa Rica's 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...

 coast, particularly around the city of Puerto Limón

Limón

Puerto Limón, commonly known as Limón , is the capital city and main hub of Limón province, as well as of the cantón of Limón in Costa Rica. It has a population of about 60,000 , and is home to a thriving Afro-Caribbean community...

. His novels and short stories have been awarded Costa Rica's Premio Nacional de Literatura

Premio Nacional de Literatura

A number of countries offer a National Prize for Literature :* National Prize for Literature * National Prize for Literature * National Prize for Literature...

 and Premio Editorial Costa Rica. He has also published a novel in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, A Message from Rosa.

He has three sons from his first marriage, Andrés, Jaime and Pablo to whom he dedicated his book Los Cuentos del Hermano Araña. He also has two daughters from his second marriage, Shara and Denise.