Neville Dawes

Neville Dawes (16 June 1926 – 13 May 1984) was a novelist and poet born in Nigeria of Jamaican parentage. He was the father of poet and editor Kwame Dawes.

Biography Neville Augustus Dawes was born in Warri, Nigeria, to Jamaican parents Augustus Dawes (a Baptist missionary and teacher) and his wife Laura, and was raised in rural Jamaica, where the family returned when he was three years old. In 1938, he won a scholarship to Jamaica College After graduating, he went to teach at Calabar High School in Kingston, Jamaica.

Returning to West Africa in 1956, he took up a teaching post at Kumasi Institute of Technology in Ghana. He was subsequently a lecturer in English at the University of Ghana (1960–70). In 1971, Dawes returned with his family to Jamaica, where he became the executive director of the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston. His poetry was also published in Caribbean literary journals, including Bim, and he was one of the editors of Okyeame, journal of the Ghana Society of Writers.

A collection on his work entitled Fugue and Other Writings was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2012, including poems, short stories, autobiographical writing and critical writing.