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Raymond R. Ramcharitar is aTrinidadian poet, playwright, fiction writer, historian and media and cultural critic.
Ramcharitar was educated at theUniversity of the West Indies, St Augustine, where he earned three degrees: a Bachelor's in Economics (1991), a Master's in Literature in English (2002) and a Doctorate in Cultural History (2007). He was awarded a fellowship toBoston University's Creative Writing Program in 2000 by Nobel LaureateDerek Walcott, where he studied poetry and drama.
Ramcharitar's published works include academic and creative books and articles. His bookThe Island Quintet (fiction), a collection of novellas, was published byPeepal Tree Press, UK, 2009.[1] It was shortlisted for theCommonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book, 2010 for the Caribbean & Canada.The Island Quintet was reviewed in theTrinidad & Tobago Review. A reviewer forThe Independent compared Ramcharitar's prose to that ofDerek Walcott andV. S. Naipaul.[2]
American Fall, a collection of poems described as "confident and engaging",[3] was published by Peepal Tree in 2007.
He published a historical work,A History of Creole Trinidad, 1956-2010[4] A book of media criticism,Breaking the News, Media & Culture in Trinidad, was published by Lexicon, a Trinidadian publisher (2005).
Ramcharitar's playParadiso was one of three winners of theWarehouse Theatre's 2002International Playwriting Festival, and he was invited to theBBC in September 2003, on a radio drama fellowship.
His work as a poet is, unusually for contemporary Caribbean poets, highly formal and entirely inStandard English. He uses traditional forms such as thesonnet, villanelle andsestina. He is influenced by Walcott,Philip Larkin,R. S. Thomas andWallace Stevens.
As a fiction writer, he has been compared toV. S. Naipaul, but his explicit sensuality and tendency to experimentation display debts to writers as diverse asUmberto Eco andThomas Pynchon. The epigraph toThe Island Quintet was from Pynchon'sGravity's Rainbow.
As an academic Ramcharitar is a polemical revisionist.[5] His latest work isA History of Creole Trinidad,1956-2010 (Palgrave Macmillan), which presents a narrative considerably at odds with nationalist histories of Trinidad & Tobago. His doctoral thesis ("The Hidden History of Trinidad: Underground Culture in Trinidad, 1870-1970") provided a "corrective" narrative to the largely ethno-centric historical narratives of West Indian nationalist historians. He has published similarly oriented articles on culture and tourism,[6] literary criticism[7] and history.[8] His work on media and culture—media and collective memory, and the Caribbean emotional economy—seeks to establish a presence in largely untapped areas of Caribbean or West Indian cultural, critical, and media scholarship.
Ramcharitar has lectured in theatre arts, cultural studies, and literature as an adjunct at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, and as a Communications Consultant in Trinidad. He started writing as a journalist in 1991, working with theTrinidad Guardian, and theTrinidad Express newspapers.
He is currently and Assistant Professor of the Humanities at the American University in Iraq, Baghdad.
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