Jamaican author wins 2008 Essence Literary Award

Margaret Cezair-Thompson was born in Jamaica, West Indies. She came to the United States at the age of nineteen to attend Barnard College, and then went on to earn a PhD in English from the City University of New York. She is the author of two novels and teaches literature and creative writing at Wellesley College.

Her second novel, The Pirate’s Daughter, won the Essence Literary Award for Fiction in 2008. The Pirate’s Daughter uses Errol Flynn’s history and personality to weave a novel filled with attachments and betrayals. It is loosely based on the life of Hollywood legend Errol Flynn, who lived in Port Antonio from the late 1940s to his death in 1959.

In The Pirate Daughter, the Australia-born Flynn fathers a daughter by the teenaged daughter of his Jamaican friend. The story follows her turbulent life into adulthood.

The book has received strong reviews: "Cezair-Thompson promises her readers a 'tropical adventure'. She evokes spectacular shipwrecks and deserted islands, infamous buccaneers and glamorous celebrities. And the story that follows makes good on these promises," read The New York Times review.

"Jamaica comes alive in all its tropical splendour" was Bookmarks Magazine's take on the novel.

Although she has lived outside Jamaica for some time, Margaret Cezair-Thompson retains strong ties to her native country. Like the main characters of her novels, she was a child when Jamaica became an independent nation in 1962, and she has witnessed the country’s changes, at times with deep concern and always with great interest.

Margaret Cezair-Thompson is the daughter of Pan-Africanist and former Jamaica government minister and senator Dudley Thompson. She read from The Pirate Daughter at the Calabash Literary Festival in St Elizabeth in May 2008.