Angela Barry

Angela Barry (née Richards) is a Bermudian writer and educator. She spent more than 20 years living abroad – in England, France, The Gambia, Senegal and Seychelles – before returning to Bermuda, where she has primarily worked as a lecturer since the 1990s. She was married to Senegalese Abdoulaye Barry and they have two sons, Ibou and Douds, although eventually divorcing. and their brother is Bermuda parliamentarian Bob Richards.

After receiving her early education in Bermuda at Central School and at The Berkeley Institute, Barry went to England in the 1960s at the age of 15 to study for her A-levels, living with her sister while attending Holland Park School in London. She went on to the University of York, obtaining a BA (Hons) degree in English & Comparative Literature, After earning a master's degree in Language Arts & Education from the University of Sussex, she introduced there a groundbreaking course in Bermudian Literature, "starting with early perceptions of the Island in the 17th century and Shakespeare’s The Tempest, to Mary Prince in the 19th century". She is co-chair of the Burland Collection Committee, concerned with the literary legacy of Brian Burland, described by Barry as "the greatest writer never to be known or acknowledged in the country of his birth". Barry has also taught at Bermuda High School.

Writing Barry's early creative writing was in the form of short stories she produced as part of the Bermuda Writers' Collective. Her work appeared in Palmetto Wine, published in 1990 by the collective, and in the 1993 anthology An Isle So Long Unknown: Short Stories.

With the 2002 UK publication of her book Endangered Species and Other Stories (the title inspired by the Dianne Reeves song "I Am An Endangered Species"), Barry became the first Bermudian adult fiction writer to have work released by an international publishing house since Brian Burland in the 1960s.

Her first novel Gorée: Point of Departure, published by Peepal Tree Press in 2010, looks at family and identity through the Atlantic holocaust. In the words of Geoffrey Philp, "Goree is more than a memorial—although that in itself would be an accomplishment. It is a story of bridging distances, both physical and psychic, between Africa and the Caribbean, London and St. Lucia, damnation and redemption in the lives families torn apart by an estranging ocean." It was nominated for the 2012 International Dublin Literary Award and in 2013 won the Brian Burland Prize for Fiction.

Barry's work has also been published in various journals, including the Bermudian Magazine, Massachusetts Review, The Caribbean Writer, BIM: Arts for the 21st Century, and Anales Caribe. She is a contributor to the 2018 Commonwealth Writers anthology, So Many Islands: Stories from the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and Pacific (edited by Nailah Folami Imoja and Nicholas Laughlin), and also to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.

In 2022, Barry published her second novel, The Drowned Forest. Describing it as "a powerful exploration of Bermuda's colonial legacy, deftly unpacking strata of class, race, privilege and education as they encircle the lives of characters living on the island", the reviewer for The Big Issue concluded: "Barry signals the perils of ignoring our history – and the climate crisis. She reminds us that our past is rooted in our present."