Debbie Jacob

Half a lifetime ago, I quit my job at Boeing Commercial Airplane Company in Seattle, got on a plane and came to the island of Trinidad in the West Indies to check out if there really was a place like the one featured in V.S. Naipaul's novel Miguel Street. I became a journalist at the Trinidad Express and then the Trinidad Guardian, and I started the English department at The International School of Port of Spain. I wrote five Caribbean literature study companions published by Macmillan Caribbean, the children's novel Legend of the St Ann's Flood-- also published by Macmillan-Caribbean- a collection of short stories, Speaking of Promises published by Archimedes Publishers and Wishing for Wings, the story of my class of boys' in the Youth Training Centre (YTC), an industrial school in Trinidad and Tobago. The boys in my class were all charged with violent armed robbery or murder. I teach English language, English literature and Caribbean history in YTC and Royal Gaol in Port of Spain. Books and writing are my life.