Stewart Brown was born in Southampton, U.K., in 1951. He studied Art and Education at Nottingham College of Education and between 1972-74 taught in Jamaica where he edited and published the little magazine Now. He taught Caribbean Literature at Wolverhampton Polytechnic, studied Fine Art/Creative writing at Falmouth School of Art, and wrote a dissertation on the Guyanese poet Martin Carter at Sussex University.
His first collection of poems, Mekin Foolishness was published in Trinidad in 1981. During the 1980s, he taught in Kano, Nigeria, experiences which led to his warmly received collections, Zinder (1986) and Lugard's Bridge (1989). He has lectured at the Centre for West African Studies at the University of Birmingham for the past dozen or so years. He has edited several anthologies of Caribbean writing (including The Heinemann Book of Caribbean Poetry [with Ian McDonald], Voiceprint [with Mervyn Morris and Gordon Rohlehr], Caribbean Poetry Now and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. He has published many books and essays on aspects of West Indian culture, including editing The Art of Derek Walcott, The Art of Kamau Brathwaite and All are Involved: The Art of Martin Carter, Peepal Tree (2000).
