David Chariandy

David Chariandy is an internationally acclaimed writer and critic. Formally trained as a literary scholar, he teaches and publishes on Black, Canadian, and Caribbean literatures. He also teaches creative writing and creative research methods. As an author of fiction and creative non-fiction, he is widely read and discussed. His novels Soucouyant and Brother, and his epistolary memoir I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter, have collectively been translated into a dozen languages, reviewed in newspapers and magazines worldwide, taught routinely in secondary and post-secondary classrooms, and substantially profiled in journals such as Callaloo, Transition, and S/X Salon. His novel Brother was adapted into an award-winning feature-length film by Clement Virgo.

Professor Chariandy’s writings have been praised by major writers such as Dionne Brand, Marlon James, and Patrick Chamoiseau. He has won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Toronto Book Prize, and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. In 2019, Chariandy was awarded Yale University’s Windham Campbell Prize for a body of fiction. In 2021, his work was the focus of a scholarly book entitled Critical Perspectives on David Chariandy’s Writings. In 2022, Chariandy was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2024, he received an annual Impact Award from The Caribbean Camera. Since 2025, he is Avie Bennett Chair of Canadian Literature in the Department of English at the University of Toronto