JOANNE HAYNES Haynes is an award-winning writer, educator, youth motivator and rapso performer. She is the founder of Pepperpot Productions, an organization that aims to educate the nation’s youth about the country’s heritage and to build patriotism. Her first novel, Walking, published by McMillan, is now a main text on the University of Trinidad and Tobago’s Literature curriculum. In 2005, she won the Derek Walcott/TTW Children’s Literature Prize for her book Sapotee Soil. She was also a finalist in the 2001 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Her writing appears in the Maco Mere Journal of the Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars, the Commonwealth Audio Compilation, and the Trinidad Express and Guardian newspapers.
Haynes was awarded a NALIS Lifetime Literary Award in 2012.
Sapotee Soil – A Call to Memory over a decade ago, little did she know it would still be making inroads into the literary landscape, with absolutely no marketing on her part.
The book – a collection of ten short stories and narratives about Caribbean legends and folklore – has been selected for Nalis' 2023/2024 One Book Many Schools (OBMS) annual, nationwide, secondary-school reading programme and will be placed in secondary-school libraries.