Simone Dalton News Today

“The sharp pain knifed up my left side, sliced across my heart and, as I screamed, my chest seemed to blow apart. I bolted up from the bed feeling that I had been shot. And there, standing in the shadows, for the third time in a week, was a black-robed figure pointing a bony finger

Nothing is ordinary or predictable in Brian Samuel’s autobiography Song for My Father. With the exception of Phil Knight’s memoir Shoe Dog, I can’t recall any book I’ve read in this genre that is so laugh-aloud funny. But Samuel’s story is one up on Knight’s for its ability to tackle serious, uncomfortable topics through humour.

Life writing – in books ranging from memoirs to family histories – is set to be a major focus at this year’s NGC Bocas Lit Fest, with readings and discussions featuring a fascinating line-up of Trinidad and Tobago authors. A rapidly growing, popular genre with locally-based writers, life writing records real-life personal and community stories.

For Trinidadian author Simone Dalton, the desire to go into full-time writing emerged from grief, when her mother, Esther Dalton, died in 2010. “She died while in Trinidad and I was in Toronto. I felt very destabilised when she died. I grew up in a single parent home and we were very close, so when