Makeda Silvera (born 1955 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a Jamaican Canadian novelist and short story writer.

Biography

Silvera emigrated to Canada at the age of 12 with her family, and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario. She published two volumes of short stories in the 1990s before releasing her first novel, The Revenge of Maria, in 1998, followed by The Heart Does Not Bend in 2002. An out lesbian,^[1] she cofounded Sister Vision Press, with Stephanie Martin in 1985, and worked and as managing editor, edited a number of anthologies, including Piece of My Heart (1991), the first North American anthology of literature by lesbians of colour.^[2] Sister Vision, which published 50 titles, closed in 2001.^[2] Piece of My Heart was described in the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law as "a landmark collection of disparate lesbian voices. By combining reprinted material by such renowned lesbian writers as Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke, Jewell L. Gomez, Chrystos, and Barbara Smith with work by such thought-provoking new writers as Raymina Y. Mays, Karin Aguilar-San Juan, Milagros Paredes, and Nice Rodriguez, Silvera creates an enduring testimony to the inextricable connection between literature and social activism for innumerable multi-ethnic and multi-racial lesbians."^[3]

Works

• Silenced: Caribbean Domestic Workers Talk With Makeda Silvera (1989, interviews)
• Remembering G (1990, short stories)
• Piece of My Heart: A Lesbian-of-Colour Anthology (1991, ed.)
• Her Head a Village (1994, short stories)
• The Other Woman: Women of Colour in Contemporary Canadian Literature (1994, ed.)
• Ma-Ka: Diaspora Juks (1997, ed.)
• The Heart Does Not Bend (2002, novel)