Austin Clarke

Austin Ardinel Chesterfield "Tom" Clarke (July 26, 1934 – June 26, 2016) was a Barbadian-born Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist and memoirist. Born in St. James, Barbados, he moved to Canada in the 1950s to study at the University of Toronto and became a leading voice on the Black and West Indian immigrant experience in Canada. Over a career spanning more than five decades he published novels, short-story collections, poetry and memoirs. His best-known novel, The Polished Hoe (2002), won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; he was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1998 and received multiple literary honours.