Born in Trinidad, Merle Hodge is currently Senior Lecturer in the Department of Liberal Arts in the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. She teaches West Indian and African Diaspora Literature as well as Creative Writing (Prose Fiction). She has published two novels Crick Crack, Monkey (1970) and For the Life of Laetitia (1993); and some short stories. She has also published a textbook The Knots in English: A Manual for Caribbean Users (1997) and written several articles in local and international journals, on Caribbean literature, language, family, gender and other cultural issues