Earl Lovelace, Trinidadian journalist, author, and playwright
Earl Wilbert Lovelace (born 13 July 1935) is a Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright, and short story writer. He is particularly recognized for his descriptive, dramatic fiction on Trinidadian culture: "Using Trinidadian dialect patterns and standard English, he probes the paradoxes often inherent in social change as well as the clash between rural and urban cultures." As Bernardine Evaristo notes, "Lovelace is unusual among celebrated Caribbean writers in that he has always lived in Trinidad. Most writers leave to find support for their literary endeavours elsewhere and this, arguably, shapes the literature, especially after long periods of exile. But Lovelace's fiction is deeply embedded in Trinidadian society and is written from the perspective of one whose ties to his homeland have never been broken."Lovelace's first novel, While Gods Are Falling, published in 1965, won the Trinidad and Tobago Independence literary competition sponsored by British Petroleum, and he is the author of five subsequent well received novels, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize-winning Salt (1996) and, most recently, Is Just a Movie, winner of the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. He has also written drama, essays, short stories and children's books. The artist Che Lovelace is his son.