Barbadian-born writer Austin Clarke is a seminal voice of the Caribbean short story, and when I recently edited Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today (TSAR Publications, 2011), I felt the anthology would be incomplete without Clarke’s work. I had had the same sentiment when editing A Shapely Fire: Changing the Literary Landscape (Mosaic Press, 1987); then his Canadian publisher, Jack McClelland, called me on the phone to grant permission, and I was delighted.
“Everything that happens in the universe has an impact on who I am, how I live, and what I write: thought, word, deed. Everything I think, I write, I speak has an impact on the world; like the...