Robert Antoni

Robert Antoni is equal parts Trinidadian, Bahamian and US citizen. His first novel, Divina Trace (Quartet, 1991), received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, an NEA, and is recognized as a landmark in Caribbean writing. His other books are Blessed is the Fruit (Faber), My Grandmother's Erotic Folktales (Faber), Carnival (Faber), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2006, and As Flies to Whatless Boys in 2015 (Peepal Tree Press). Antoni is the recipient of a Guggenheim...See more

Robert Antoni is equal parts Trinidadian, Bahamian and US citizen. His first novel, Divina Trace (Quartet, 1991), received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, an NEA, and is recognized as a landmark in Caribbean writing. His other books are Blessed is the Fruit (Faber), My Grandmother's Erotic Folktales (Faber), Carnival (Faber), which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2006, and As Flies to Whatless Boys in 2015 (Peepal Tree Press). Antoni is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and the NALIS Lifetime Achievement Award from the Trinidad and Tobago National Library. He draws upon his two hundred years of family history in Trinidad and Tobago and his upbringing in the Bahamas. Antoni's short fiction has appeared in Conjunctions, The Paris Review, Ploughshares and other periodicals, including as the Editor's Choice for The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories (1985). He holds an MA from Johns Hopkins University, and an MFA and a PhD from the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. He is a former Associate Professor of creative writing and Caribbean literature at the University of Miami, where he taught for nine years and acted as Associate Director of the Caribbean Writers Summer Institute. He lives in Manhattan and teaches in the graduate writing program at The New School University. See less