Erna Brodber
Erna Brodber is a Jamaican writer, sociologist and social activist. She is the sister of writer Velma Pollard.Biography
Born in the farming village of Woodside, Saint Mary Parish, Jamaica, she gained a B.A. from the University College of the West Indies, followed by an MSc and PhD, and has received a predoctoral fellowship in psychiatric anthropology. She subsequently worked as a civil servant, teacher, sociology lecturer, and researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Research in the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. After working at the university, she left to work full-time in her home community of Woodside.
She is the author of five novels: Jane and Louisa Will Soon Come Home, Myal, Louisiana, The Rainmaker's Mistake, and Nothing's Mat. Brodber works as a freelance writer, researcher and lecturer in Jamaica. She has received many awards, including the Gold Musgrave medal three times: once from the Institute of Jamaica for work in literature, once from the government of Jamaica for community work, and once from the government of the Netherlands for work in literature and orature Brodber is currently Writer in Residence at the University of the West Indies.Awards and honours
She won the Caribbean and Canadian regional Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 1989 for Myal. In 1999 she received the Jamaican Musgrave Gold Award for Literature and Orature. She received a Windham–Campbell Literature Prize in 2017.
