m. nourbeSe philip was born in Trinidad and Tobago and educated at the University of West Indies, Mona, receiving a B.Sc. in Economics. She took graduate degrees in Political Science and Law at the University of Western Ontario and practiced law in Toronto for seven years before turning to a career in the arts, primarily as a poet, novelist, and essayist. Spanning the fields of Black Studies, Feminist Studies, English Literature, decolonial thought, and studies of poetic form and language, her work as an intellectual and poet considers how the displacement of Black people, within and in the aftermath of transatlantic slavery, has provided the conditions to express alternative forms of being that breach longstanding practices of dehumanization and racism. Philip has written 15 acclaimed books in different genres (essays, poetry, novels, plays) and her writings have been commissioned for 22 literary anthologies. While all her writings are commendable, her long cycle poem, Zong! is her most lauded. In 2014, Jenny Sharpe described the poem as “a new and different kind of speech/language for speaking/writing the memory that silence holds…[a] written record…spiralling across the pages.” Philip’s writing and performances have been recognized by multiple arts organizations including the Casas de las Américas, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Canada Council, PEN, the Modern Language Association, and the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize. Philip received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Queen’s University in 2022 and the Tobago Diaspora Award in 2024.