Delia Jarrett-Macauley

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Delia Jarrett-Macauley

FRSA
Born
Hertfordshire, England
NationalityBritish
Other namesDee Jarrett-Macauley
Alma mater
Occupations
  • Writer
  • academic
  • broadcaster
Notable work
  • The Life of Una Marson, 1905–65 (1998)
  • Moses, Citizen & Me (2005)
AwardsOrwell Prize
Websitewww.deliajarrettmacauley.com

Delia Jarrett-Macauley

Leeds University, Birkbeck, University of London, and other educational establishments, most recently as a fellow in English at the University of Warwick.[4] She is also a business and arts consultant, specialising in organisation development.[5]

Early years and education

Delia Jarrett-Macauley was born

London University.[9]

Career: cultural sector and academia

Jarrett-Macauley began working in the cultural sector in the mid-1980s, including as Director of the Independent Theatre Council, and as a consultant to

Caine Prize for African Writing in 2007[12] as well as in 2016, when she was chair of the judging panel.[13][14][15] In July 2016 Jarrett-Macauley was appointed chair of the Caine Prize board of trustees,[16][17][18] stepping down in April 2019, when her successor was named as Ellah Wakatama Allfrey.[19]

Her university teaching career began in 1989, when she ran the first black women's studies courses on the MA in women's studies at the

Birkbeck College
, London.

She has been a visiting fellow in gender studies at the

Goldsmiths College, London, and has contributed to many professional development courses in Europe at a range of institutions, including the Amsterdam Summer University and (in association with the European Cultural Foundation) the King Baudouin Foundation (Brussels) and the European Network of Cultural Administration Training Centres.[4]

Jarrett-Macauley has contributed to a number of academic publications as author and board member, including

Gender and History.[4] She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.[22][23][24] In October 2018 it was announced that Jarrett-Macauley was included in the 2019 edition of the Powerlist, ranking the 100 most influential Black Britons.[25]

Jarrett-Macauley has also edited Shakespeare, Race and Performance: The Diverse Bard in Contemporary Britain (June 2016), with contributors who include

Pat Cumper, Sita Thomas, and Terri Power.[26][27]

In 2016 Jarrett-Macauley was on the London Book Fair delegation to China, where she spoke at The Shanghai International Book Fair and at various events in Beijing, including the Beijing Book Fair's Cultural Industries Forum.[28] She was also filmed for the British Council's "Walking the cities" series in Rome.[29]

Writing

Jarrett-Macauley has written two significant books: The Life of Una Marson, 1905–65 (first published in 1998) and the novel Moses, Citizen & Me (2005).

The Life of Una Marson, 1905–65

She is the author of a well received biography of the

Independent on Sunday ("genuinely inspiring"), Sheila Rowbotham ("a scholarly work, deftly written"), while Stuart Hall praised it as "a significant contribution to the work of historical memory".[30]

Moses, Citizen & Me

Jarrett-Macauley's 2005 novel takes as its subject matter the conflict in Sierra Leone, drawing imaginatively on "both the European canon and African oral traditions to illuminate the sufferings of child soldiers and their families".[31] The book was widely and positively reviewed, including by such as Aminatta Forna ("A deeply affecting and vividly told story of ordinary people with the courage to survive.... A wonderful book"), Bernardine Evaristo in Wasafiri ("This is a very serious and significant choice of subject matter for a debut novel; ambitiously rendered, it proves fertile and potent ground for fiction."), Francis Wheen ("An extraordinary novel about war, childhood, art and salvation. Shakespearean tragedy recast in modern Africa, transformed into a redemptive vision as magical as a midsummer night's dream."),[3][31] while Lucy Beresford remarked in The Literary Review: "...her understated prose a foil to the bleak and disturbing subject matter. ...sensitively establishes the family as a microcosm of the ruptured nation.... and Shakespeare provides an inspirational and uplifting agent of therapy."[31][32]

In the Guardian, Ali Smith commented on "the considered and multi-layered story of a Sierra Leone family blasted apart by one of its children turning boy soldier in the civil war. It is a novel remarkable for its slowed, measured pulse and its calm analysis, its keenness to promise hope and rehabilitation even after the worst", and Maya Jaggi wrote : "Seven years ago Delia Jarrett-Macauley published The Life of Una Marson 1906-65, a landmark biography of the Jamaican feminist who became the BBC's first black programme maker. In her debut novel, Jarrett-Macauley again breaks ground with a delicate and brave, if over-ambitious, fictional treatment of child soldiers in the aftermath of a west African civil war....as a deftly sensitive exploration of a tormented generation, and a family's dilemma, it is a haunting piece of fiction."[33]

Moses, Citizen & Me was awarded the Orwell Prize in 2006,[34] with the judges concluding: "It is a work of great intimacy and moral complexity, the kind of writing that sheds light on a world we barely understand...the book is one that Orwell himself might have liked."[35]

In 2008, following the publication of

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, a bestselling first-hand account by Ishmael Beah of his time as a child soldier during the civil war in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, the accuracy of which was questioned,[36][37] there was also some discussion about the memoir's alleged similarity in parts to Jarrett-Macauley's novel.[38]

Broadcasting

Jarrett-Macauley has worked on a number of broadcasting projects for BBC Radio, including devising and presenting The Una Marson Story (BBC Radio 3)[39] and Black Women Writers in 1930s England on BBC Radio 4. In 2006 she made the Radio 4 feature Imaginary Homeland, for which she returned to Sierra Leone after 30 years, and the programme "interweaves her memories and her fiction with the real struggle to rebuild the place known as Salone".[40] She has also contributed to other BBC programmes such as Woman's Hour[41] and Open Book on Radio 4, the Radio 3 website on Ideas and Culture and the 2004 BBC Music Live Festival. She voiced Warrior Marks, Alice Walker's documentary film, which was shown on UK television (based on the 1993 book of the same title about female genital mutilation).[4]

In 2022, Lenny Henry's production company, Douglas Road Productions, made a television documentary entitled Una Marson, Our Lost Caribbean Voice, broadcast on BBC Two,[42] in which Jarrett-Macauley asks: "How could we have let someone of Una Marson's calibre just disappear?"[43][44]

Bibliography

As editor

References

  1. ^ a b Delia Jarrett-Macauley website.
  2. ^ "Novel about child-soldiers wins prize", Leicester Review of Books, 21 April 2006.
  3. ^ a b Jones, Sam (5 April 200). "Garton Ash wins Orwell prize". The Guardian.
  4. ^ a b c d e "Delia Jarrett-Macauley biography", Delia Jarrett-Macauley website.
  5. ^ "The 2013 Panel" Archived 28 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine, Transmission Prize for the Communication of Ideas.
  6. ^ "Jarrett-Macauley, Delia, 1958- - LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies | Library of Congress, from LC Linked Data Service: Authorities and Vocabularies (Library of Congress)".
  7. Granta Books
    .
  8. ^ Musiyiwa, Ambrose (4 November 2006). "'Something Beautiful and Strong': Interview with Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Winner of Orwell Prize for Political Writing". BlogCritics.[permanent dead link]
  9. ^ "Delia Jarrette-Macauley" [sic], EBSCOhost Connection.
  10. ^ "BBA Shakespeare", University of Warwick.
  11. ^ "Delia Jarrett-Macauley" Archived 24 February 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Conville & Walsh.
  12. ^ Jarrett-Macauley, Delia (18 February 2014), "Othello can be white, Romeo can be a girl", News and Updates, Delia Jarrett-Macauley website.
  13. ^ "2016 Judges", The Caine Prize.
  14. ^ Bagnetto, Laura Angela (9 February 2016). "Caine Prize judges read Africa's best stories; Accra's vibrant literary scene". Africa: Stories in the 55. RFI.
  15. ^ Wilde, Christine (June–August 2016). "Telling Stories". Overseas: The Journal of the Royal Over-Seas League (706): 18–21.
  16. ^ "New Chair Of Trustees For Caine Prize" Archived 14 August 2016 at the Wayback Machine (press release), Book Trade, 21 July 2016.
  17. ^ Onwuemezi, Natasha (22 July 2016). "Caine Prize appoints Jarrett-Macauley as chair of trustees". The Bookseller.
  18. ^ "New Chair of Trustees", The Caine Prize, 22 July 2016.
  19. ^ "Our New Chairperson", The Caine Prize, 2 April 2019.
  20. ^ "Reconstructing Womanhood, Reconstructing Feminism: Writings on Black Women" (1996), Delia Jarrett-Macauley website.
  21. ^ "Previous Visitors to the Gender Institute" Dr Delia Jarrett-Macauley, LSE Gender Institute.
  22. ^ Busby, Margaret (9 March 2019). "From Ayòbámi Adébáyò to Zadie Smith: meet the New Daughters of Africa". The Guardian.
  23. The Financial Times
    .
  24. ^ "Delia Jarrett-Macauley published in New Daughters of Africa". TGRG. 25 August 2022.
  25. ^ Hicks, Amber (23 October 2018). "List of 100 most influential black people includes Meghan Markle for first time". mirror. Retrieved 20 April 2020.
  26. ISBN 978-1138913820
    .
  27. ^ "Shakespeare, Race and Performance: The Diverse Bard in Contemporary Britain" at Amazon.
  28. ^ "LBF to host series of events across China as part of BIBF and Shanghai International Literature Festival" Archived 28 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine, The London Book Fair, 19 August 2015.
  29. ^ "Shakespeare Lives: Walking Cities, Rome", YouTube.
  30. ^ "The Life of Una Marson 1905–1965", Delia Jarrett-Macauley website.
  31. ^ a b c "Moses, Citizen and Me", Delia Jarrett-Macauley website.
  32. ^ "Lucy Beresford Enjoys Five Very Different First Novels", The Literary Review, Issue 318, February 2005.
  33. ^ Jaggi, Maya (5 March 2005). "Citizen pain". The Guardian.
  34. ^ "Award for Sierra Leone war novel", BBC News, 5 April 2006.
  35. ^ "2006 Book Prize Winner: Delia Jarrett-Macauley, Moses, Citizen and Me" page, The Orwell Prizes.
  36. ^ "Inconvenient truths of a child soldier", The Australian, 21 January 2008.
  37. ^ Kaoma, Kaelyn (2017). "Slave, Hero, Victim: The Child Soldier Narrative in Context" (PDF). Department of English University of Toronto. pp. 50–51, 55–56. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  38. ^ Harayda, Kanice (4 February 2008). "The OTHER Book About Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone". One-Minute Book Reviews.
  39. ^ "Twenty Minutes", BBC Radio 3, 24 May 2004. Radio Times, Issue 4183, 20 May 2004, p. 128.
  40. ^ "Imaginary Homeland", BBC Radio 4 FM, 31 March 2006. Radio Times, Issue 4277, 23 March 2006, p. 131.
  41. ^ "Una Marson: First black woman producer at the BBC", Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, 3 March 2009.
  42. ^ Nicholson, Rebecca (23 October 2022). "Una Marson: Our Lost Caribbean Voice review – a beautiful, moving portrait of BBC's first Black broadcaster". The Guardian.
  43. ^ "BBC 100: Lenny Henry on Una Marson's forgotten legacy". BBC News. BBC. 18 October 2022. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
  44. ^ Henry, Lenny (21 October 2022). "Sir Lenny Henry speaks on Una Marson's forgotten legacy". jamsixty.com. Retrieved 28 October 2022.

External links

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