By Sherring Dartiguenave, WNBA Treasurer
Dr. Elizabeth Nunez was an award-winning author of ten novels and a memoir. Born in Cocorite, Trinidad on February 8, 1944, she emigrated to the United States after completing high school. She earned a PhD in English from New York University and taught creative writing as a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College.
The Caribbean immigrant experience was often featured in her novels, along with themes of family and love. Her books received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal. Her novels Anna In-Between, Even in Paradise, Boundaries, Prospero’s Daughter, Grace, Discretion, and her memoir Not for Everyday Use (Hurston Wright Legacy Award for nonfiction and Oprah online book club selection) are published by Akashic Books, with Now Lila Knows, published in 2022, being her last novel. Her first novel, When Rocks Dance, was published in 1987. Most books are also available in audio.
Nunez also wrote several monographs of literary criticism, which have been published in scholarly journals. She co-edited the anthology Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad. She co-founded the National Black Writers Conference and was the director for fourteen years. She also executive produced the 2004 Emmy-nominated CUNY TV series, Black Writers in America, which was narrated by Ossie Davis and aired on PBS.
Award nominations include the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, the 2012 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Fiction, an International Dublin Literary Award, the Trinidad and Tobago One Book, One Community selection, New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, Novel of the Year for Black Issues Book Review, an American Book Award, the Independent Publishers Book Award, and several others.
Winning first place in a writing contest as a child set the stage for Dr. Nunez to keep winning awards. She won the 2013 National Council for Research on Women Outstanding Trailblazer Award, the 2013 Caribbean American Distinguished Writer Award, the 2012 Trinidad and Tobago Lifetime Literary Award, and others.
Nunez served in many literary and educational positions: former Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs at Medgar Evers College, faculty member at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and juror for national and international literary prizes/awards, including the international Dublin IMPAC Literary Prize, the National Endowment for the Humanities Award, the Ernest Gaines Literary Prize, and the Fulbright Award for Creative Writing.
The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF) named prizes after the three-time African American Literature Book Club bestselling author for Caribbean writers of the diaspora. BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize is open to unpublished writers of Caribbean heritage in the United States and Canada while the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean is open exclusively to Caribbean writers who reside and work in the Caribbean or are on temporary assignment overseas.
On October 23, 2013, WNBA-NYC was lucky enough to have Dr. Nunez serve as moderator for a National Reading Group Month (NRGM) panel at Strand Book Store in Union Square featuring authors Bernice L. McFadden, Caroline Leavitt, Roxana Robinson, John Searles, and Michèle Forbes. In October 2016, she was invited back as an NRGM panelist at Pen + Brush, along with Catherine Lowell, Dinitia Smith, Lyndsay Faye, and Sam Raim. The theme was re-imagined classics. Nunez tackled Shakespeare’s King Lear in her novel Even in Paradise.
Surrounded by family, Nunez passed away in her Brooklyn home on November 8, 2024, at the age of 79. She is survived by a son and two granddaughters.
