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James
Berry was born and grew up in coastal village in Jamaica,
the fourth child in a family of six. Aged 17 he left his
home to work in America as part of a wartime contract labour
scheme. After four years, appalled at the way blacks were
treated, he returned to his home village disillusioned and
vowing never to leave again. However he came to Britain
in 1948 and took evening classes to educate himself and
eventually became a telegraphist.
He says
that through his education at school, the white family of
his village and his own village people he became aware of
certain established attitudes and beliefs that troubled
him. He began to understand that at the heart of this was
the slave history he had inherited and a belief that he
belonged to a life that was irreversibly and unquestioningly
inferior. When he came to Britain he says that he was aware
at the lack of material about the Caribbean available to
British schools. James's first book Blue foot Traveller,
was an anthology of Anglo-Caribbean poetry aimed at
teenagers.
In 1971
he was awarded a C Day Lewis Fellowship and worked as a
writer in residence at Vauxhall Manor Comprehensive School
in London. He has written a number of volumes of verse -
including Fractured Circles and Chain of Days - and won
the National Poetry Prize in 1981 for his poem Fantasy Of
An African Boy.
His
celebrated collection of stories about childhood in the
Caribbean, A Thief In The Village, was the Grand Prix winner
of the Smarties Prize in 1987.
James
Berry has a special interest in multicultural education
and the development of Black British writing. He has worked
on radio and television for schools, is well known for his
workshops and school readings throughout the country and
has also toured overseas for the British council. He was
awarded an OBE in 1990.
When
he is not writing books he can be found listening to music
(jazz, reggae and Mozart), watching TV, reading or watching
cricket. He now lives in Brighton and divides his time between
the UK and Jamaica.
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