Brown, Wayne

Wayne (Vincent) Brown, the poet and writer, was born on 18 July 1944 in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and educated at St Mary's College, Port of Spain, the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, and the University of Toronto. He held a Gregory Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Leeds in 1975-1976. He won the Jamaican Independence Festival Poetry Prize in 1968, and his collection of poetry entitled On the coast won the Commonwealth Prize for Poetry in 1972. He is equally well-known for his biography of Edna Manley (1975), his edition of Derek Walcott's poetry, and his collection of stories, The child of the sea (1990). His other writings include Landscape with Heron, Voyages, and Bearing witness: the best of the Observer Arts Magazine 2000 . In 1968 he married Megan Hopkyn-Rees, a Yorkshire art student; she has become a renowned Caribbean interior decorator. Edna Manley (ne Swithenbank) (1900-1987), the sculptor and founder of the Jamaica School of Arts whose biography he wrote, was married to Norman Washington Manley (1893-1969), an Oxford graduate in Law who was Prime Minister of Jamaica, 1959-1962, and a national hero as the founder of the moderately socialist People's National Party. Their son, Michael Norman Manley (1924-1997), was also Prime Minister of Jamaica, 1972-1980 and 1989-1992.