Get to Know Our Artist-in-Residence
Joanne C. Hillhouse: Writer, Editor, Laureate, Advocate
Photo by Annetta Jackson, Intersect Antigua-Barbuda
Intersect is honoured to unveil its first-ever Artist-In-Residence, Antigua and Barbuda’s very own, Joanne C. Hillhouse!
Joanne, or Jhohadli, is one of Antigua and Barbuda’s most prominent contemporary writers. Having contributed to the growth of the literary scene on a local, regional, and international scale, she has published eight books of fiction — in addition to poetry, plays, and non-fiction pieces in several Caribbean and global anthologies and journals.
Joanne C. Hillhouse, or Jhohadli, is a self-described #gyalfromOttosAntigua. In 2023, she was selected as the arts and letters laureate for the Anthony N. Sabga Award for Caribbean Excellence.
Joanne is, according to a 2018 LitHub article, among “10 Female Caribbean Authors You Should Know.”
Her books provide eight opportunities to get to know her. They are:
1. Novel: Oh Gad!, which was a Weekend Reads selection on NPR.
2 & 3. Novellas: The Boy from Willow Bend and Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, which had a 10th-anniversary edition with Other Writings.
4. Teen/YA book: Musical Youth, a runner-up for the inaugural Burt Award for teen/YA Caribbean literature, which received a starred review from Kirkus which also named it one of their top titles of 2020.
5-8. Picture books: To Be a Cheetah, The Jungle Outside, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, which also has a Spanish language edition titled ¡Perdida! Una Aventura en el Mar Caribe. With Grace, began as an honourable mention in the Desi Writers Lounge story contest and was an official pick for the Governor’s Summer Read Challenge in the USVI.
Her short fiction has also appeared in a number of anthologies:
New Daughters of Africa, with the story “Evening Ritual,” and its abridged German translation Neue Töchter Afrikas, featuring “Abendritual.”
Windrush, featuring “The Other Daughter” which was previously published on the Commonwealth Foundation Creatives’ Adda online platform.
So the Nailhead Bend, So the Story End: An Anthology of Antiguan and Barbudan Writing, featuring “After Glow” which was previously published in the online literary platform Tongues of the Ocean.
In the Black: New African Canadian Literature, featuring “Man of Her Dreams.”
For Women: In Tribute to Nina Simone, featuring “Sexy Sadie.”
Pepperpot: Best New Stories of the Caribbean, featuring “Amelia at Devil’s Bridge,” which has since been excerpted in Harper Collins’ CSEC English A revision guide.
Joanne has also published poetry and/or fiction in literary journals like, among others, PEN America, The Columbia Review, Pree – Caribbean.
Her writing has also been published in Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters, The Caribbean Writer, Akashic’s Duppy Thursdays and Mondays are Murder noir series, Interviewing the Caribbean, Womanspeak: A Journal of Art and Writing by Caribbean Women, BIM: Arts for the 21st Century, Poui: Cave Hill Journal of Creative Writing, and The Missing Slate in which “Something Wicked” was named story of the week in 2014.
She’s won prizes for flash fiction, including “When We Danced,” featured in The Caribbean Writer, and has been three times long listed for the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival short story prize for “The Rumour,” “Freedom Cup – The Games are Coming”, and “Vincent.”
She was twice short-listed for the Small Axe fiction prize for “Genevieve” in 2012, and “Amelia at Devil’s Bridge, in 2013. Her stories and books, including The Boy from Willow Bend and Musical Youth, which are on schools’ reading lists in Antigua and Barbuda, have been taught and/or read in schools and universities in and beyond the Caribbean.
Joanne has also published non-fiction as a journalist and essayist in Essence, Publishers Weekly, Writers Digest, Huffington Post, Oxford University Press, among others.
She blogs regularly at jhohadli.wordpress.com, where readers can find her CREATIVE SPACE art and culture column, which has a print run in the Daily Observer newspaper, and Blogger on Books review series.
Her non-fiction prizes include recognition from the OECS Clean Oceans Journalists Challenge, PAHO Media Awards, and Caribbean Media Awards.
“In 2020, the Antigua and Barbuda Directorate of Gender Affairs awarded Joanne a Women of Wadadli Award for literature. Joanne embraces this as a gender and arts advocate, and a true lover of the arts and of ‘all’ literature. ”
As an editor, Joanne has taken on a wide range of projects including books, various commercial projects, and special publications, such as an edition of Tongues of the Ocean and Carnival is All We Know: An Anthology Celebrating 50 Years of Antigua’s Carnival
She works freelance on a wide range of projects and dedicates whatever time she can to community arts initiatives like the Cushion Club with which she was a volunteer reader and PR for many years, and the Wadadli Pen Inc. non-profit, born out of a project she launched in 2004 to nurture and showcase the literary arts in Antigua and Barbuda.
Joanne has been a reader, panelist, and presenter at literary events across the Caribbean, Latin America, the US, Canada, Scotland, and the United Arab Emirates.
In 2020, the Antigua and Barbuda Directorate of Gender Affairs awarded Joanne a Women of Wadadli Award for literature. Joanne embraces this as a gender and arts advocate, and a true lover of the arts and of 'all' literature.
She has written for stage, screen, and song, and remains committed to experimenting and growing in her craft while retaining her passion for writing – which, as she has always said, is how she processes life.
