Colin Channer was born in Jamaica to a pharmacist and cop. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, The Common, and Renaissance Noire, among other places. Channer has served as Newhouse Professor in Creative Writing at Wellesley College and Fannie Hurst Writer in Residence at Brandeis University. His many books of prose include the novella The Girl with the Golden Shoes, “a very moving and mesmerizing journey” in the words of Edwidge Danticat; and Providential, his first book of poetry. He won the Silver Musgrave Medal in Literature in 2010 and currently lives in New England.