Austin Clarke

Austin Clarke is a Barbados-born Canadian author. He studied English at the University of Toronto before a lack of finances forced him to abandon his program. He became a reporter in Timmins, Ontario and journalism eventually led him to freelance employment with CBC where he travelled to Harlem and conducted his now famous interview with Malcom X. Clarke published early and widely in his career, with his early works including The Survivors of the Crossing, Amongst Thistles and Thorns, and the novels that comprise his Toronto trilogy: The Meeting Point, Storm of Fortune, and The Bigger Light. He went on to serve as managing editor of Contrast, Toronto’s flagship black newspaper, and pursued different career opportunities thereafter. His novel, The Origin of Waves, won the 1997 Rogers’ Writers Trust Fiction Prize. Clarke died in November, 2018 in Toronto.