Opal Palmer Adisa

Opal Palmer Adisa (b. 1954, Jamaica) PhD is diverse and multi-genre, an exceptional talent nurtured on cane sap and the oceanic breeze of the Caribbean. Writer of both poetry and prose, playwright/director, professor, gender specialist and cultural activist, Adisa has lectured and read her work throughout the USA, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Germany, Spain, France, England and the Czech Republic, and has performed in Italy and Bosnia. An award-winning poet and prose writer, Adisa has 22 titles to her credit, including the novel It Begins With Tears (1997), which Rick Ayers proclaimed as one of the most motivational works for young adults. Now the director of the institute for gender and development studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Adisa is the former distinguished professor of creative writing/literature in the MFA programme and the diversity studies programme at the California College of the Arts, where she taught for 23 years.