Charles Robert Saunders (July 12, 1946[1] – May 2020)[2] was an African-American author and journalist, a pioneer of the "sword and soul" literary genre with his Imaro novels.
[5][3] Drafted to fight in Vietnam in 1969,[3] he instead moved to Canada, living in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario[5][3] before a sojourn in Ottawa of fourteen[5] or fifteen years.
[3] Poet George Elliott Clarke, who had written a column on Black issues for the Halifax Daily News before moving to Ontario, recommended him to editor Doug MacKay, who after meeting Saunders took a chance and hired him.
[3] Saunders worked the night shift as a copy editor[6] as well as writing his own weekly column on African-Nova Scotian life,[3] for which he wrote his thoughts out in longhand during the day.
In his last years he lived with little money in a modest apartment on Primrose Street in Dartmouth, N.S., lacking a landline, mobile phone or internet connection.
[3] Daily News colleagues praising Saunders's journalism include Doug MacKay, Bill Turpin, and Michael de Adder.
Authors remembering him as an inspiration or mentor include Troy Wiggins, publisher of FIYAH, Milton Davis, operator of MVmedia and co-editor with Saunders of Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology, Taaq Kirksey, developer of a television project based on Imaro.
Inspired in Africa, he created the fictional continent Nyumbani (which means "home" in Swahili), where the stories of Imaro, his sword and sorcery series, take place.
[7] In 2000, author and editor Sheree Renée Thomas (Sheree R. Thomas) published Saunders' original short story, "Gimmile's Songs" in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora published by Warner Aspect, as well as his original essay, "Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction".