Caribbean News
Nalo Hopkinson, writing her way into history
By Dana Malcolm
Staff Writer
February 27, 2023 – Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1960, Nalo Hopkinson is a multi-award-winning science-fiction author and is the youngest and first Black woman conferred with the title of Damon Knight Memorial Grandmaster.
Known for her use of Caribbean lure and stories in fantastical Science Fiction and fantasy novels the author grew up in Jamaica, Guyana, and Trinidad, and eventually settled in Canada. Thanks to her father’s position as a writer she rubbed shoulders with authors like our Black is Beauty Caribbean Connection pick, Derek Walcott.
Undeterred by her diagnoses of ADHD, and nonverbal learning disorder, the author says this time this has fueled her
“I write science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction; call it whatever you want, my novels and stories are full of the unreal, the futuristic, the unlikely, the impossible,” she muses.
She has produced books like Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, The Salt Roads, Skin Folk, and more which have won her dozens of awards.
In 2021 she was named the 37th Damon Knight Memorial Grandmaster, an award given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, for lifetime achievement in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The award puts her in the company of legendary authors like Ursula K Le Guin (Earthsea) and Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
Hopkinson holds a British Fantasy Award for ‘People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction’; a Nebula Award for ‘Sister Mine’; an Aurora Award, a Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and Sunburst Award, an Octavia Butler Memorial Award and many many more.
Hopkinson now teaches at the University of California Riverside.