"Eric Derwent Walrond"(December 18,1898-August 8,1966)

Was a Harlem Renaissance writer,who made a lasting contribution literature;his work still being in print today as a classic of its era.He was well travelled,being born in Georgetown,Guyana (British Guiana)the son of a Barbadian mother and a Guyanese father,moving early in life to live in Barbados,and then Panama,New York,and eventually England.His most famous book Tropic Death,published in New York City in 1926 when he was 28,in which he brought together ten stories,at least one of which had been previously in small magazines.He had published other short stories,prior to this,as well as a number of essays.The scholar Kenneth Ramchand described Eric book as a "blistering' of the imagination;others described his work as "mpressionistic' and frequently telegraphic'reflecting his use of short sentences.When Eric was eight,his father left,and he moved with his mother,Ruth,to live with relatives in Barbados,where he attended ST.Stephen's Boy's School,before moving to Panama at the time when the Panama Canal was being built.Here Eric completed his school education and became fluent in Spanish as well as English.Following training as a secretary and stenographer,he was employed as a clerk in the Health Department of the Canal Commission at Cristobal,and as a reporter for the Panama Star-Herald newspaper.In 1918 he moved to New York where he attended Columbia University,being tutored by Dorothy Scarborough.In New York Eric worked at first as a hospital secretary, porter,and stenographer.His Utopian sketch of a united Africa,"A Senator's Memories"(1921) won a prize sponsored by Marcus Garvey,and after working briefly for Marcus,he became a protege of the National Urban League's director Charles S. Johnson.Here Eric was a contributor to,and business manager  of,the Urban League's Opportunity magazine between 1925-27,which had been founded in 1923 to help bring to prominence African-American contributors to the arts and politics of the 1920s.He was also a contributor to Smart Set,and Vanity Fair and Negro World.His short stories included On Being Black (1922), On Being a Domestic (1923),Miss Kenny's Marriage (1923),The Stone Rebounds (1923),Vignettes of the Dusk (1924),The Black City (1924),and City Love (1927).In 1928 Eric was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction.After a decade in America,Eric left for England,where he met English writers and artists during the 1930s, including Winifred Holtby.Later in life he continued to employ his editorial skills from time to time,while working as an account.At age 67 Eric collapsed on a street in central London was pounced dead on arrival at ST. Bartholomew's Hospital.Following and autopsy he was buried at Abney Park Cemetery,Stoke Newington on September 17 1966.After his death, which was reduced circumstances,his early literary work has enjoyed wider recognition,as reflected in Winds Can Wake up the Dead...and The Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories,both published in the last decade.At the time,his passing  appears to have gone unoticed Arna Bontemps wrote of his death,from a fifth heart attack,in a letter to Langston Hughes,dated 1 September 1 1966,and Countee Cullen's poem "incident"is dedicated to Eric.