Colin Channer

was born in Jamaica, and educated there, and in New York. His ten books as fiction writer, poet and editor include Console (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023), Finalist for a 2023 New England Book Award. His prose and poetry have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Bomb, The Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Conjunctions, Agni, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly and other venues.

Recent honors include a 2023 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poet’s & Writers Magazine; a 2022 Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library; a 2019 Amy Clampitt Residency; and a 2018 Henry Merritt Wriston Fellowship from Brown University, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Literary Arts. Previous honors include a 2015 Fellowship in Fiction and a 2014 Fellowship in Poetry from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and a 2010 Musgrave Medal in Literature, one of the oldest awards in the Western Hemisphere.

Channer’s collection Providential was a Finalist for the 2016 OCM/Bocas Prize in poetry. His anthology Kingston Noir was a Spectator Magazine (UK) Best Book of 2012. His novel Waiting in Vain was a national bestseller and 1998 Critic’s Choice Selection of the Washington Post, which described it as “a clear redefinition of the Caribbean novel—in which the discourses of post-colonialism have been usurped by the creative assurance of reggae’s aesthetic …” As a monologist Channer has appeared in New York at venues such as Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, The Dweck Cultural Center at Brooklyn Public Library, The Bowery Poetry Club, and in Boston at the Wilbur Theatre.

A social entrepreneur, Channer is a co-founder of the not-for-profit Calabash International Literary Festival Trust and served as the organization’s artistic director and board chairman from 2001-2012, guiding it from inception to maturity as a leading presenter of writing workshops, literary performances, publishing seminars, and film screenings—all at no cost to the public—passion being the only price of entry. The festival has been featured in Vogue, The Guardian (UK), The New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, The New Statesman (UK), The Independent (UK) and other venues.