CEZAIR-THOMPSON, Margaret 1956-

PERSONAL: Born August 19, 1956, in Kingston, Jamaica; naturalized U.S. citizen; daughter of Dudley J. (a barrister) and Genevieve Cezair-Thompson; children: Ben. Ethnicity: "Mixed." Education: Barnard College, B.A., 1979; City University of New York, Ph.D., 1990.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of History, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02482.

CAREER: Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, senior lecturer in English.

MEMBER: Writers Guild of America East.

WRITINGS:

Photo Finish (screenplay), 1994.

The True History of Paradise (novel), Plume (New York, NY), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS: Margaret Cezair-Thompson told CA: "Love of literature and language is my primary inspiration and motivation. I began reading and writing poetry and stories in childhood. There are emotional things that are contemplated and expressed in the act of writing.

"Writers like Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, James Joyce, Paule Marshall, Gabriel García Marquez, Yeats, and Thomas Hardy have been very influential. The language of the Bible is also a strong influence.

"I write in notebooks during the process of writing a novel. I use the notebook as a way of entry into the novel and as a place of dialogue between me and the work I'm creating."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 1999, Brendan Dowling, review of The True History of Paradise, p. 1789.

Library Journal, June 1, 1999, Yvette Weller Olson, review of The True History of Paradise, p. 170.

Publishers Weekly, July 5, 1999, review of The TrueHistory of Paradise, p. 60.

World Literature Today, winter, 2002, Andrea Shaw, review of The True History of Paradise, p. 124.