About Walcott

Winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize for Literature, Derek Walcott was born on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia on January 23rd, 1930. He graduated from the University of the West Indies, Mona Jamaica campus. In 1957, he was awarded a fellowship by the Rockefeller Foundation to study the American Theatre. He visited Trinidad in 1958 and finding a wealth of enthusiastic talent, he returned in 1959 and founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop.

His plays have been produced by the Mark Taper Forum, and the Negro Ensemble Company. His signature play Dream on Monkey Mountain won the Obie Award for Distinguished Foreign Play in 1971. He has won a Royal Society of Literature Award, the Cholmondeley Prize, the New Statesman's Jock Campbell Award, the Welsh Arts Council International Writer's Prize, the Queen's Medal for Poetry, and was a recipient of a five-year fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation. He is an Honorary Member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

He left the Workshop in 1981 to pursue a career in teaching at Boston University but still maintains strong ties with its Board of Directors. Visit our Derek Walcott Collection to purchase works by our illustrious founder.