Robert Antoni

Robert Antoni was born in the United States of Trinidadian parents and grew up largely in the Bahamas, where his father practised medicine. He says his "fictional world" is "Corpus Christi", the invented island (based on Trinidad) that he introduced in his first novel, Divina Trace (1991).[http://robertantoni.com/biography/ Biography], Author's website.

Antoni studied at Duke University and in the creative writing programme at Johns Hopkins University, before joining the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa,[http://www.tribune242.com/news/2014/apr/16/lecturer-launches-writing-workshop/ Lamech Johnson, "Lecturer Launches Writing Workshop"], Tribune 242, 16 April 2014. where he began working on Divina Trace.

He has said that he spent a total of ten years completing the novel, which won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for best first novel in 1992.[http://www.nalis.gov.tt/Research/SubjectGuide/Biographies/BiographiesAC/tabid/100/Default.aspx?PageContentID=1131 Robert Antoni biography], NALIS.

Antoni lived for a time in Barcelona and taught at the University of Miami from 1992 to 2001. In 2004, he began teaching at Barnard College, Columbia University and The New School.[http://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement/faculty-list/?id=88179 Faculty, The New School.] In 2010, he was a Guggenheim Fellow.[http://www.gf.org/fellows/16922-robert-antoni John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.]

His novel As Flies to Whatless Boys was the overall winner of the 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. At the award ceremony on 26 April, Antoni pledged to share the US$10,000 prize money with the other finalists, Lorna Goodison (winner of the poetry category for Oracabessa) and Kei Miller (winner of the literary non-fiction category for Writing Down the Vision: Essays and Prophecies).[http://inagist.com/all/460221834718638080/ In-A-Gist][http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Whatless-Boys-wins-it-for-writer-Antoni-256919101.html Anna Ramdass , "‘Whatless Boys’ wins it for writer Antoni"], Trinidad Express Newspapers, 27 April 2014. Kei Miller and Antoni were both features presenters at the 2018 Key West Literary Seminar: Writers of the Caribbean.{{Cite news|url=https://www.potentmagazine.com/i-am-a-translation-writing-the-global-caribbean-language/|title="I Am a Translation": Writing the Global Caribbean Language|date=11 February 2018|work=POTENT Magazine|access-date=12 February 2018|language=en-US}}

Antoni currently resides in New York City where he teaches literature at The New School for Public Engagement.{{Cite web|url=https://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement/faculty-list/?id=4f44-597a-4e6a-413d|title=Robert Antoni – Public Engagement|website=www.newschool.edu|language=en|access-date=12 February 2018}}

• 1992 Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best First Book, Divina Trace
• 1999 Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, My Grandmother's Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head
• 2010 Guggenheim Fellow for his work on the historical novel As Flies to Whatless Boys
• 2014 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature (Fiction and overall winner), As Flies to Whatless Boys{{cite web |url=https://guardian.co.tt/entertainment/2014-03-31/top-three-ocm-bocas-prize-named |title=Top three for OCM Bocas Prize named |work=T&T Guardian |author= |date=31 March 2014 |access-date= 3 April 2014}}

• Divina Trace, Robin Clark, 1991, {{ISBN|978-0-86072-136-9}}
• Blessed Is the Fruit, Henry Holt and Co., 1997, {{ISBN|978-0-8050-4925-1}}
• My Grandmother's Erotic Folktales, 2000; Grove Press, 2002, {{ISBN|978-0-8021-3900-9}}
• Carnival, Black Cat, 2005, {{ISBN|978-0-8021-7005-7}}
• {{cite book|title=As Flies to Whatless Boys|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=14EMkmK8tQQC&pg=PA154|year=2013|publisher=Akashic Books|isbn=978-1-61775-156-1|pages=154–}}

• 1998 "Another Day Under the Black Volcano" in Outside Magazine
• 1999 "Blackbeard Doesn't Come Here Anymore" in Outside Magazine
• 2001 "Party in the Islands" in Ocean Drive Magazine

• Robert Antoni, Bradford Morrow (eds), The Archipelago: New writing from and about the Caribbean, Bard College, 1996, {{ISBN|978-0-941964-43-2}}

• Caribbean literature
• Caribbean poetry
• Postcolonial literature

{{reflist|30em}}

• Gifford, Sheryl. “(Re)Making Men, Representing the Caribbean Nation: Individuation in the Works of Fred D’Aguiar, Robert Antoni, and Marlon James.” Diss. Florida Atlantic U, 2013.
• {{Citation|last= Machado Sáez |first= Elena |year= 2015 |chapter= Electronic Archives and the Digital Futures of Caribbean Diasporic Writing |title= Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction |place= Charlottesville |publisher= University of Virginia Press |isbn= 978-0-8139-3705-2}}.
• Patteson, Richard Francis. The Fiction of Robert Antoni: Writing in the Estuary, University of the West Indies Press, 2010, {{ISBN|978-976-640-229-7}}

• [http://www.robertantoni.com/ Official website]
• [http://bombmagazine.org/article/2729/robert-antoni "Robert Antoni by Lawrence Scott" (interview)], BOMB 91, Spring 2005.

{{OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Antoni, Robert}}

Category:1958 births

Category:Living people

Category:Trinidad and Tobago novelists

Category:Duke University alumni

Category:Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni

Category:The New School faculty

Category:Barnard College faculty

Category:Trinidad and Tobago male writers

Category:20th-century male writers

Category:21st-century male writers