Ian McDonald was born in Trinidad in 1933, educated at Queen’s Royal College in Trinidad, read History at Cambridge, was a gifted tennis player, and captained the Cambridge, Guyana, and West Indies Davis Cup teams. He went to Guyana in 1955, was Director of Bookers and later of the Guyana Sugar Industry as well as CEO of the Sugar Association of the Caribbean. A long-time columnist for the Stabroek News, he is the author of twelve books of poetry, an internationally renowned novel, The Hummingbird Tree, a book on his family ancestry, along with many other publications as editor and contributor. He lives in Guyana.