N.D. Williams was born in Guyana in 1942. He went to Jamaica as a research student to study at Mona in the late 1960s and was very much involved in the student/youth uprising of the Rodney affair in 1968. He writes of being powerfully influenced by the radical, nativist currents in Jamaican culture - reggae and yard theatre - of this period. He had stories published in Jamaica Journal and Savacou and in the anthologies, One People’s Grief (1983) and Best West Indian Stories.
In 1976 his novel Ikael Torass won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize. It draws on his experiences in Jamaica and explores the role of the university and education as an agent of social division, and the revolt on campus and in the wider society against those repressive forces. It contains an insightful and sympathetic portrayal of the Rastafarian role as an inspiration for the nativist revolt.
He lived for a time in Antigua before moving to the USA where he lives in New York. His works, from the short stories of The Crying of Rainbirds (1992), the novel, The Silence of Islands (1994), the two novellas ‘My Planet of Ras’ and ‘What Happening There, Prash’ in Prash and Ras (1997), to the short stories in Julie Mango (2003), all published by Peepal Tree, explore both an island and a diasporic experience.
