Barbara Jenkins was born in Trinidad. She began writing in her seventies, and is the author of a novel, a collection of short stories and now a memoir, The Stranger Who Was Myself. She has won awards including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Caribbean Region), the Wasafiri New Writing Prize, The Canute Brodhurst Prize, the Small Axe short story competition, My African Diaspora Short Story Contest and a Guyana Prize for Literature.
 
From her childhood in colonial Port of Spain, to becoming a young mother in Wales and then returning to Trinidad, Jenkins tells her story with wit, emotional sensitivity and insight. Her experience is one rich with themes of gender, race, colonial politics, migration, language and class, woven into a compelling, poignant, and often very funny narrative.