Nanton's published books includeIsland Voices: From St Christopher to the Barracudas and Frontiers of the Caribbean (2014),Canouan Suite and Other Pieces (2016), andRiff: The Shake Keane Story (2021).
Born in St Vincent & the Grenadines, Philip Nanton studied and lived in England between 1960 and 2000, when he relocated to Barbados.[3][9] He began his career in British local government policymaking, and completed his D.Phil at theUniversity of Sussex (1986), following which he combined academic work with being a creative writer.[3] Among his publications are two edited anthologies of literary criticism. He has written of his "personal journey, away from conventional disciplinary analysis, primarily sociological, to the use of creative expression for social analysis in the context of the Caribbean."[10]
Also a broadcaster, Nanton has made radio documentaries on Caribbean literature and culture, including presenting forBBC Radio 4 in 1998What Does Mr Swanzy Want?, the story ofCaribbean Voices, an influential programme of the 1940s and '50s, and its producerHenry Swanzy.[12]
In 2008, Nanton produced a spoken-word CD entitledIsland Voices from St Christopher & the Barracudas, which was the basis of a 2014 book of the same name published byPapillote Press.[13]
His collection of creative writingsCanouan Suite and Other Pieces, a finalist for the 2014 Hollick Arvon Prize for Caribbean Writers (now theEmerging Caribbean Writers Prize) at theBocas Lit Fest,[14] was published in 2016 by Papillote Press, and was highly recommended for a 2018Casa de las Américas Prize for Anglophone Caribbean Literature.[3] In 2017, Nanton publishedFrontiers of the Caribbean (Manchester University Press), described by Robert Edison Sandiford as a "blend of the 'scholarly' and the 'creative'."[15]
Nanton's most recently published book isRiff: The Shake Keane Story (2021), a biography of the Vincentian jazz musician and poetShake Keane.[3][16][17] ReviewingRiff (which Nanton dedicates to photojournalist and historianVal Wilmer), jazz criticJohn Fordham wrote: "Nanton is closely attuned to the expressiveness of the local Creole-derived dialect's vowel-stretches and musicality, and to those issues of migration, masculinity and nationalism that profoundly shaped his subject's life. ...Philip Nanton's fine book opens a window on both a jazz story and a literary story that the chroniclers of both fields have largely bypassed."[18] InCaribbean Intelligence, John Stevenson's review concluded: "Nanton admirably succeeds in writing a highly engaging account of one of the Caribbean’s legendary creative forces."[19]
In 2012, Nanton's poem "Punctuation Marks" – fromThe Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry (edited byIan McDonald andStewart Brown, 1992) – represented Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the projectPoetry 2012: The Written World, in which a poem was chosen to capture the spirit of each nation competing in the2012 Olympic Games in a collaboration withBBC Radio Scotland.[20][21]
"What Does Mr. Swanzy Want – Shaping or Reflecting? An Assessment of Henry Swanzy's Contribution to the Development of Caribbean Literature",Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 46, No. 1 (March 2000), pp. 61–72. Originally inKunapipi Vol. XX, No. 1 (1998).[22]
"Shake Keane's Poetic Legacy", in Sandra Courtman (ed.),The Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers, Vol. 1, 2000.[23]
"'All that Greek manure under the green bananas': Migration in Derek Walcott's Omeros and Homer's The Odyssey".Migration Studies, Volume 6, Issue 3, November 2018, pp. 472–476 (https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnx068).
"Caribbean 'frontier societies' like St Vincent are defined by the ever-present interplay between the civilised and the wild",London School of Economics, 10 December 2018.[26]
"Belonging and a Sense of Place",Writers Mosaic, 2021.[27]
"Seeing Slantwise",Arts Etc, 30 December 2022.[28]
