Auteur: Thomas MacDermot

Thomas Mac Dermot (1870-1933) was a Jamaican poet, novelist, and newspaper editor. Born in Clarendon Parish, he was raised in a family of five children in Trelawny. After receiving his education at Falmouth Academy and at the Church of England Grammar School in Kingston, he remained in the capital to teach and become a journalist. Starting at The Jamaica Post and The Daily Gleaner, he moved to the Jamaica Times, where he would serve as editor for twenty years. In 1899, he launched a popular short story contest for young writers, helping further the careers of famed poet Claude Mc Kay and journalist H. G. de Lisser. By 1903, he established All Jamaica Library, a low-cost series of short fiction by Jamaican authors. Mac Dermot also wrote his own works of fiction under the anagrammatic penname “Tom Redcam.” Becka’s Buckra Baby (1903) is considered a landmark of Jamaican literature and helped distinguish the Caribbean as a hotspot for modern writing. Following his death in England, Mac Dermot was posthumously appointed Jamaica’s first Poet Laureate.