I started out writing short prose and short adult fiction for the Jamaica Observer. I love how a great short story can stay with you forever.

After I became a parent, I started writing children’s books. There were all these important lessons that I wanted to impart but in a fun way so that children would get the messages of compassion, kindness, inclusion, diversity, perseverance and tenacity, and road safety. I love that my children have benefitted from my stories and I want every other child to also benefit. It was important for me to have people who looked like my children to be represented in books. My children and our lives together have inspired and taught me life lessons that I could never have imagined.

I started writing poetry during the pandemic. During lockdown life slowed to a pace where I could appreciate nature and the relationships around me. I also had time to take a poetry course at the University of Toronto and learned that poetry encompasses so many forms, that there are so many ways to think and write poetry. It is an art that makes me come alive. Certain poems are meant to be performed. Writing poetry has awakened something in my soul and has made me a better writer overall.

My writing is influenced by my background as a Jamaican, a person of colour, a woman and living in a diverse city in North America where I observe the every day tensions of the struggle for identity, the gap between the generations especially between immigrants and their children, the hope and the struggle for a better life.

I am an activist, a lover of literature, a fan of what I call “realistic sci-fi.” Most of all, if my writing, whether it be a poem, adult fiction or children’s literature, can change someone’s world for the better, or give them some insight they didn’t have before, then I’m grateful. I’ve done what I set out to do.

Thank you for landing here. I hope something inspires, motivates and encourages you.