Jane Bryce | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1951 (age 74–75) Lindi, Tanzania |
| Citizenship | British[1] |
| Alma mater | Obafemi Awolowo University |
| Occupations | Writer, journalist, literary critic and academic |
| Partner | Philip Nanton[2] |
| Website | www |
Jane Bryce (born 1951) is a British writer, journalist, literary and cultural critic, as well as an academic. She was born and raised in Tanzania, has lived in Italy, the UK and Nigeria, and since 1992 has been based in Barbados.[1] Her writing for a wide range of publications has focused on contemporary African and Caribbean fiction, postcolonial cinema and creative writing, and she is Professor Emerita of African Literature and Cinema at theUniversity of the West Indies, Cave Hill.[3]
She edited the anthologyCaribbean Dispatches: Inside Stories of the Caribbean (2006), and is the author of a 2007 collection of short fiction, entitledChameleon.
Jane Bryce was born in 1951 inLindi, Tanzania, and grew up inMoshi.[4] She was educated at schools in Tanzania until the age of 13, when she was sent to school in England.[1] As she said in an interview inAfrican Writing, "I have a British passport, because when I was born in Tanzania, it was aBritish protectorate. We were given the choice of citizenship at 'Uhuru' [independence] and my father opted for British. As he was deported under the Africanization policy, perhaps it's as well, but then again, if we'd been Tanzanian citizens we wouldn't have been deported."[1] As by now her father was working for the UN agency FAO, the family left for Rome in 1968 when she was seventeen.
In the 1980s, Bryce worked as a freelance journalist both in London and while studying for a PhD in Nigeria, where she did doctoral research on Nigerian women's writing atObafemi Awolowo University, from 1983 to 1988, earning a PhD.[1]
In 1992, she moved to Barbados, becoming an active member of the Caribbean literary community. She taught African literature and cinema, in addition to creative writing, at theUniversity of the West Indies, Cave Hill, and was editor ofPoui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing (first published in 1999) for 20 years, since its founding, and a noted contributor of poetry to the journal.[5][6][7][8]
She also founded the Barbados Festival of African and Caribbean Film, of which she was a director from 2002 to 2007, and she was Barbados curator of the Africa World Documentary Film Festival (2009–2016).[1][3]
She has contributed over the years to a wide range of academic journals and essay collections.[9] She compiled the anthologyCaribbean Dispatches: Beyond the Tourist Dream (Macmillan UK, 2006), and is the author of the 2007 collectionChameleon and Other Stories (Peepal Tree Press).[10] In 2023 she publishedZamani: a Haunted Memoir of Tanzania (UK: Cinnamon Press).
Bryce has served as a judge for literary awards both locally and regionally, including theGuyana Prize for Literature[11] and theOCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.[12]
In 2017, she was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study atIndiana University.[13][14]
In 2022, she guest-edited an edition of the online magazineWritersMosaic (an initiative of theRoyal Literary Fund) entitled "Is english we speaking: African/Caribbean dialogue", contributors to which includedBilly Kahora,Colin Grant,Stewart Brown,Funso Aiyejina,Philip Nanton,Tendai Huchu,Claire Adam and Robert Taylor.[15]