In Continental Shelf, Fred D’Aguiar once again demonstrates his artistic ability to delve into trauma, eking out the unspoken pains, and then coming to grips with the situation in order to move on with life and living. We have to move on, perhaps, to the next crisis, fortified by the past.
Continental Shelf is mainly about the shooting to death of 32 persons and the suicide of the shooter at Virginia Tec University in 2007, where the author teaches. The second or middle section of the book, labelled ‘Elegies’, is a sequence of 139 poems (D’Aguiar thrives on long poems) about that mayhem and its repercussions.   
This collection is also about other familiar themes in which the author dabbles – harping back to his childhood and reaching back further, connecting with the ancestors.
Another of D’Aguiar’s work dealing with trauma of a contemporary event is Bill of Rights, a long narrative poem about the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1978.
D’Aguiar has ‘stepped off the continental shelf’ (Dara Singh), from London to Guyana to London to USA, gifting the world literary gems of his sojourns.
His first two books, collections of poems, Mama Dot  and Airy Hall, are about his formative years in rural Guyana, and a very good place to start – a combination of grandmothers as portrayed in the first book and the vastness of country, extended family, the effects of post-colonialism and the ills of contemporary politics as portrayed in the second book. Both books deal with alienation and both books exhibit the writer’s liking for the long poem. In his third book, British Subjects (poetry), D’Aguiar deals with alienation in the country of his birth.
D’Aguiar’s first novel, The Longest Memory, tells the story of slavery on an eighteenth-century Virginia plantation. There are two other books dealing directly with slavery: Feeding the Ghosts, based on the true story of a slave who survived being thrown overboard from a slave ship in the Atlantic with 132 other men, women and children, and Bloodlines, a  long narrative poem in the form of a novel,  about a black slave and her white lover.
His second and fourth novels deal with looking at life through the eye of the child. Dear Future is about a nine-year-old boy, and Bethany Bettany about a five-year-old girl.
D’Aguiar has also written a number of plays, and essays.
Fred D’Aguiar was born in London in 1960, came to Guyana when he was two, and spent his formative years at Airy Hall, Mahaicony, and at Kitty Village, before returning to England in 1972 to complete his secondary school education.
He is a trained psychiatric nurse. He read for a degree in African and Caribbean Studies at the University of Kent, Canterbury, which led to a number of positions in various universities. He is now attached to the University of Virginia, USA, as professor of English and Creative Writing.
His enormous literary output has earned him a handful of awards. D’Aguiar has won the Guyana Prize on four occasions:  in 1987, he won in the poetry category for his first collection, Mama Dot; in 1994, he won in the Best First Book of Fiction category for his first novel, The Longest Memory; in 1996, he won in the Best Book of Fiction category for his second novel, Dear Future; and in 2004, he shared the Best Book of Fiction award with David Dabydeen for his novel, Bethany Bettany.
The novel, The Longest Memory, brought D’Aguiar honour on three occasions: the Guyana Prize for Literature, David Higham Prize for Fiction,  and Whitbread First Novel Award.
Mama Dot was also a multiple winner, taking the Guyana Prize and Malcolm X Prize for Poetry.         
Feeding the Ghosts was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (fiction), and Continental Shelf was shortlisted for T. S. Eliot Prize.
D’Aguiar has also won the Greater London Council Literature Award, Minority Rights Group Award, and the T. S. Elliot Award.
As D’Aguiar’s sojourn continues, from land to land, expectation is high that he would unveil other literary gems. 
Responses to this author telephone (592) 226-0065 or email: oraltradition2002@yahoo.com
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