Joan Anim-Addo


Joan Anim-Addo is a Grenadian-born academic, poet, playwright and publisher, who is Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Academic career

Born in Grenada in the Caribbean, Joan Amin-Addo joined the faculty of Goldsmiths, University of London, in 1994, as founder and Director of the Centre for Caribbean and Diaspora Studies.
She has taught at Vassar College in the USA and lectured at many universities internationally, including SUNY Geneseo, the University of Turku in Finland and the University of Trento. She has also led workshops on creative non-fiction writing.
At Goldsmiths, she is the convenor for the undergraduate options "Caribbean Women's Writing" and "Black British Literature", as well as convenor of the "Literature of the Caribbean and its Diasporas" pathway within the Comparative Literary Studies MA programme. She is also co-convenor, with Deirdre Osborne, of the world's first MA in Black British Writing, which Hannah Pool described as a "landmark for black culture", while novelist Alex Wheatle sees it adding "to the fabric of British literature".

Publishing and writing

In 1995 Anim-Addo founded Mango Publishing, specialising in the "Caribbean voice", with a particular focus on women's writing, the Mango list featuring books by such writers as Beryl Gilroy, Velma Pollard and Jacob Ross.
In 2008 Anim-Addo wrote the libretto to Imoinda, a re-writing of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko. Anim-Addo's other published work includes poetry collectionsHaunted by History in 2004 and Janie: Cricketing Lady in 2006 – and a literary history, Touching the Body: History, Language and African-Caribbean Women’s Writing. She co-edited I Am Black, White, Yellow: An Introduction to the Black Body in Europe and Interculturality and Gender, and is the founder-editor of New Mango Season, a journal of Caribbean women's writing.
In December 2016 Anim-Addo was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award for "invaluable contributions to literature and to literary and cultural studies" by the literary quarterly journal Callaloo.

Selected bibliography