H. Nigel Thomas

H[ubert] Nigel Thomas was born in Dickson, St Vincent and the Grenadines. He immigrated to Canada in 1968. He’s a graduate of Concordia, McGill and Université de Montréal. He taught English and French at the Protestant School Board of Greater Montreal and was later a professor of United States literature at l’Université Laval.

Apart from dozens of essays published in journals and anthologies world wide, he is the author of six novels, three collections of short fiction, two collection of poems,and two books of literary criticism. His books Lives: Whole and Otherwise and Behind the Face of Winter have been translated into French as Des vies cassées and De glace et d’ombre respectively.

From the late 1970s to 1988, he was a volunteer tutor of French. In 1983, he co-founded The Free South Africa Committee. In 1986, he co-founded Kola Magazine. He is its current editor. In 2015 he founded Lectures Logos Readings and is its English-language coordinator. In cooperation with The University of the West Indies Open Campus, St Vincent and the Grenadines, he established, in 2018, The “Shake” Ellsworth Keane Poetry Prize and the H. Nigel Thomas University of the West Indies Open Campus Fiction Prize.

His novel Easily Fooled as well as a collection of poems, The Voyage, were published in 2021. He is the 2022 recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts John Molson Prize and the 2021 winner of the  Quebec Writers’ Federation Judy Mappin Community Award, as well as the following: the 2020 Black Theatre Workshop’s Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award, the  2013 Université Laval’s Hommage aux créateurs, the  2000 Montreal Association of Black Business Persons and Professionals’ Jackie Robinson Professional of the Year Award (2000. His books have been nominated for the following awards. In 2015,  the  Paragraphe Bookstore Quebec Writers’ Federation Hugh MacLennan Fiction Prize; in 2013,  for le Prix Carbet des lycéens; in 1994, the QSPELL Hugh MacLennan Fiction Prize. For more about him and his works, please visit his website hnigelthomas.org.

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