Velma Pollard is a retired Senior Lecturer in Language Education in the Department of Educational Studies, Faculty of Arts and Education of the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. Her major research interests have been Creole Languages of the Anglophone Caribbean, The Language of Caribbean Literature and Caribbean Women’s Writing. Articles in these areas appear in local and international journals. She has published a handbook: From Jamaican Creole to Standard English-a handbook for teachers (1994,2003) and a monograph: Dread Talk-the language of Rastafari (1994, 2000). Pollard is involved in Creative writing and has published poems and stories in regional and international journals and anthologies. She has a novel, three collections of short fiction and five books of poetry on the market. Her novella Karl won the Casa de las Americas prize in 1992.