In 2012, Ayan­na Lloyd Ban­wo was a young writer search­ing for an out­let. Find­ing kin­ship and en­light­en­ment among kin­dred spir­its, she has al­so found her voice–fresh, com­pelling, unique­ly Trinida­di­an!

Set to re­lease her de­but nov­el, When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamil­ton) on Feb­ru­ary 10, Lloyd Ban­wo has been deemed by the UK Guardian’s Ob­serv­er one of its ten best first-time nov­el­ists of 2022. Oth­ers like recog­nised writer and her for­mer teacher Monique Rof­fey hails her as “a ris­ing star.”

“I was made in­to a writer in Trinidad,” the Lon­don-based Lloyd Ban­wo told Sun­day Guardian in an in­ter­view last Wednes­day.

“It was Bo­cas, it was the Crop­per Foun­da­tion work­shop, Monique Rof­fey’s work­shop, men­tor­ing with the Mas­ters with Earl Lovelace, the com­mu­ni­ty of writ­ers in Trinidad. Every step along your jour­ney is im­por­tant.”

Her hu­mil­i­ty showed as she traced the lit­er­ary read­ings, dis­cus­sions with fa­mous and emerg­ing writ­ers, work­shops and oth­er pro­grammes in the lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty that helped nur­ture her tal­ent.

Apart from her re­cent recog­ni­tion, a high point in the 41-year-old’s jour­ney was read­ing her work in pub­lic for the first time at Bo­cas Lit Fest in 2014. To top it off, there were writ­ers she ad­mired in the au­di­ence.

Be­ing award­ed a full-tu­ition schol­ar­ship in 2017 to do her Mas­ters at the Uni­ver­si­ty of East An­glia (UEA), one of the old­est and one of the most pres­ti­gious cre­ative writ­ing pro­grammes, was an­oth­er high­light for the promis­ing nov­el­ist. The lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty, fam­i­ly and friends would ral­ly around her to cov­er liv­ing ex­pens­es.

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's first novel, When We Were Birds, has been named one of the best debut novels of 2022 by the UK Observer.

“Bo­cas was in­stru­men­tal again in find­ing a very gen­er­ous donor and I al­so had a ‘Go­FundMe’. That was a high point, the fact that the com­mu­ni­ty be­lieves in you.

“Bo­cas could ask me for any­thing ex­cept my first­born,” she laughed, con­firm­ing sen­ti­ments ex­pressed to this news­pa­per the day be­fore by in­com­ing Fes­ti­val and Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor of Bo­cas Lit Fest, Nicholas Laugh­lin, on her keen sense of com­mu­ni­ty. Laugh­lin de­scribed her as “very down-to-earth, very bright, clear­ly imag­i­na­tive” and “one of the most ex­cit­ing new tal­ents” he has ob­served in re­cent years.

Some of Lloyd Ban­wo’s in­flu­ences are famed writ­ers, Earl Lovelace, Olive Se­nior, Toni Mor­ri­son and Arund­hati Roy. In ad­di­tion to Rof­fey, she ben­e­fit­ted from the tute­lage of writer and re­tired UWI lec­tur­er Mer­le Hodge, and po­et and aca­d­e­m­ic Fun­so Aiye­ji­na, and spent time with oth­er emerg­ing Trin­bag­on­ian writ­ers, in­clud­ing Alake Pil­grim, Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan, Jan­nine Hors­ford and Hadas­sah Williams.

“Cer­tain­ly for me the com­mu­ni­ty of women that I was writ­ing with was re­al­ly in­stru­men­tal, not just be­ing taught by peo­ple who were al­ready es­tab­lished, but al­so by my co­horts, my fel­low writ­ers who were al­so learn­ing and just try­ing to be bet­ter writ­ers was re­al­ly im­por­tant,” she said.

Per­haps most in­struc­tive, how­ev­er, were the sto­ries her grand­moth­er Yolande Grander­son told about her own life grow­ing up in Bel­mont, and about her chil­dren and the fam­i­ly.

Lloyd Ban­wo’s ma­ter­nal grand­par­ents, then pub­lic ser­vants, moved to Diego Mar­tin in the 1960s, but Bel­mont, the home­town of gen­er­a­tions of women on her moth­er’s side, was sig­nif­i­cant in shap­ing her.

With her aunt, Lor­raine, a teacher at her for­mer pri­ma­ry school, Di­a­mond Vale Pri­ma­ry, it was easy for Lloyd Ban­wo and her cousins to pile in­to Lor­raine’s car and go from school to their grand­moth­er’s home about eight min­utes away.

“My grand­moth­er was a great read­er, so was my grand­fa­ther, Al­bert Grander­son and fa­ther Ronald Lloyd– the whole fam­i­ly re­al­ly–so they al­ways bought us books. My aunt was in­to mu­sic, so it meant that our child­hood was al­so full of mu­sic. We used to play the steel­pan. Lor­raine and my moth­er, Gale, taught pi­ano. So that was my child­hood, a lot of books, a lot of fam­i­ly time, a lot of mu­sic and a lot of sto­ries.”

By the time Lloyd Ban­wo en­tered sec­ondary school at Bish­op Anstey in Port-of-Spain, she was de­vel­op­ing a pen­chant for writ­ing.

“I loved Eng­lish. Eng­lish and His­to­ry, they were al­ways my favourite sub­jects. If the teacher said write an es­say about a par­tic­u­lar top­ic and every­body else groaned, I was hap­py.”

For­mer class­mates would tell her lat­er that they al­ways knew she would be a writer, but Lloyd Ban­wo con­fessed that back then, she was not so sure.

“I al­ways liked writ­ing. I al­ways loved read­ing. Peo­ple ask me: ‘when did you de­cide to be a writer?’ That was very late. I didn’t know how to start to be a ‘writer’. I just knew I liked to write. I didn’t know how you met a pub­lish­er or oth­er writ­ers to talk to.”

A Bo­cas Lit Fest ad kin­dled her in­ter­est in 2012, a year af­ter the vi­brant cel­e­bra­tion of the re­gion’s pre­mier lit­er­ary minds start­ed, chart­ing her on an as­cen­dant course. Com­ing face to face with life’s fragili­ty af­ter los­ing her moth­er, fa­ther and grand­moth­er with­in the space of three years, the UWI grad­u­ate re­solved to pur­sue her dream to study abroad for a Mas­ters in Cre­ative Writ­ing.

“The pe­ri­od be­tween 2012/2013 and 2016–as much as it was the time when I was writ­ing, grow­ing a lot– was very dif­fi­cult.

“I was an adult, but no­body is ready to lose their par­ents. It’s tough. It was very desta­bil­is­ing.”

Out of her tur­moil, Lloyd Ban­wo birthed When We Were Birds, a time­less, emo­tive nov­el about love, ghosts, loss and re­new­al.

Set in con­tem­po­rary Trinidad, the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed work tran­scends the nat­ur­al, tak­ing read­ers on a riv­et­ing jour­ney that mas­ter­ful­ly shifts be­tween every­day life and the myth­i­cal.

Lloyd Ban­wo draws on Caribbean per­spec­tives on death, con­tem­plat­ing an­ces­tral con­nec­tions and rev­er­ence for the dead ver­sus dis­so­ci­a­tion from the dead through her pro­tag­o­nists, Yejide and Dar­win.

“The idea of my an­ces­tors be­ing on a plane I can ac­cess that I have to pay homage to, that I think about, that I can gain in­spi­ra­tion from, pro­tec­tion from, is very im­por­tant to me and I would say it shaped a lot of the spir­i­tu­al ba­sis of this nov­el.”

Yejide, whose dy­ing moth­er im­parts in her the pow­er to com­mune with the dead, is des­tined to meet down-on-his-luck gravedig­ger Dar­win, who shows up in Port An­ge­les hop­ing to find the fa­ther he nev­er met. Spir­i­tu­al­ly in­ter­twined, the two must over­come ad­ver­si­ty to dis­cov­er trans­for­ma­tive love.

Lloyd Ban­wo, too, has seen re­demp­tion in her per­son­al life in the af­ter­math of her deep loss. Shrug­ging off the weight of a gru­elling pan­dem­ic, she got mar­ried in April last year.

“I had to seize love, I had to hold on to that,” she shared, en­cour­ag­ing oth­ers to cher­ish each oth­er in these un­cer­tain times.

To cre­atives who are yet to re­alise their dreams, she ad­vised: “Find your tribe, your com­mu­ni­ty. You can on­ly cul­ti­vate a voice by con­sum­ing and sur­round­ing your­self with the great­est art and peo­ple that you can ac­cess.”

Lloyd Ban­wo has been pub­lished in Moko Mag­a­zine, Small Axe and PREE and short­list­ed for the Small Axe Lit­er­ary Com­pe­ti­tion and the Wasafiri New Writ­ing Prize. She is cur­rent­ly work­ing on her sec­ond nov­el which is set in the same world as her first and fo­cus­es on an in­her­it­ed house that re­fus­es to be sold.

When We Were Birds will be avail­able next month at Pa­per Based Book Shop in St Ann’s, Tales N Trea­sures in St James, and on Ama­zon.