Born 1951 in Southampton, Stewart Brown studied art and literature at Falmouth School of Art, the University of Sussex and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He spent periods teaching in schools and universities in Jamaica, Nigeria, Wales and Barbados. Since 1988 he has taught in the Department of African Studies and Anthropology (formerly Centre of West African Studies) at the University of Birmingham, where he is now Reader in Caribbean Literature and was for some years the Director of the Centre. He has travelled widely through West Africa and the Caribbean in relation to both his research and creative writing, and lectured for the British Council in both regions.