Margaret Cezair-Thompson

Margaret Cezair-Thompson left Jamaica to study English literature, Drama, and Creative Writing at Barnard College (where she was mentored by Marjorie Housepian Dobkin[2]).

She then went on to complete her PhD at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where she wrote her dissertation on Trinidadian writer V. S. Naipaul with the help of legendary American critic Alfred Kazin.

[5] The writers (and books) of special interest to Cezair-Thompson include Virginia Woolf, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, Jean Rhys, William Shakespeare, James Joyce (Dubliners), Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness), William Butler Yeats, and Derek Walcott The True History of Paradise, Cezair-Thompson's first novel, follows Jean Landing on a drive across the mountains as she attempts to flee Jamaica for the United States.

During the ride, she recalls memories of her own fractured past as she notes the increasingly violent confrontations between political factions of her island nation:[6] The True History of Paradise was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award in 2000.

"[7] Focusing on the transitional period of Jamaica in the 1940s and 1950s, immediately preceding independence, in which physical and psychological manifestations of a British colony still prevailed, The Pirate's Daughter won the Essence Literary Award for Fiction in 2008, People Critic's #1 Choice in 2007, and the ABA Book Sense #1 Pick for October 2007.