Fred D’Aguiar was born in London in 1960 and raised in Guyana, returning to Britain when he was twelve. Upon leaving school, he worked for three years as a psychiatric nurse before studying English Literature at the University of Kent. D’Aguiar now resides in the United States, where he is Professor of English and Gloria D. Smith Professor of Africana Studies at Virginia Tech State University. His earliest works were poetry, including the collections Mama Dot (1985), Airy Hall (1989), British Subjects (1993) and Continental Shelf (2009), and the long poems Bill of Rights (1998) and Bloodlines (2000). D’Aguiar’s poetry, which oscillates between the Guyana of his youth and the bleak Britain of the late twentieth century, has received the Malcolm X, T. S. Eliot and Guyana Poetry Prizes. His first novel, The Longest Memory...
1244 words
Citation: Ward, Abigail. "Fred D'Aguiar". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 September 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1103, accessed 14 December 2025.]
