A pioneer in US-based Caribbean studies, she became a professor of English at the University of Miami in 1992.
[1] In 2023, she was honoured with the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters.
[2] Sandra Pouchet was born in Trinidad, and undertook studies for her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the United States.
[2][3] In 1982, she published the first book-length study of the fiction of George Lamming, The Novels of George Lamming, regarded as "a seminal work",[4] and she is also the author Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation (2002).
[5] She was the recipient of the 2023 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters, "in recognition of her pioneering contributions to academia, literature and cultural studies",[2] presented to her in April 2023 at the first fully in-person festival since 2019.