Early life and education
Robert Edison Sandiford was born in Montreal, Quebec, in 1968 to Barbadian parents. His father, Marcus Evelyn Sandiford, was a high school geography and history teacher and a church organist. His mother, Erla Blandeen Sandiford (née Hewitt), is a retired registered nurse and longstanding Avon sales representative. Both his parents immigrated to Canada from Barbados shortly after their marriage in 1958 and were married until his father’s death with Alzheimer’s in 2002. He has two older brothers and a younger sister.
Sandiford’s earliest experiences of storytelling involve his mother’s accounts of Barbadian family life, mythology and parables; popular children’s verse and stories his father read to him; and comic books and comic magazines his brothers and cousins bought. Walking home from primary school on evenings, he would “write” his own fantastical stories in his head. He continued to write on paper through high school and college, creating characters he would return to in later years, like his detective Julius C. McDuff.
His first published piece was "My Dad," a front-page essay about his relationship with his father that appeared in The Gazette (now Montreal Gazette) for Father's Day in 1988.
He attended French primary and secondary schools, and has a Diploma in Pure and Applied Sciences from Vanier College, which he obtained in 1987. When he graduated with a BA in English Literature from McGill University in 1990, he was awarded a Lionel Shapiro Award for Creative Writing (fiction).
Career
Out of university, Sandiford worked for a couple years as a clerk at the wholesale office of bookseller Nicholas Hoare. During this time, he wrote short stories, articles, and graphic novels, and began publishing his work in Canada, the US and the UK.
Apart from what he was reading in those early days, particularly for reviews for little magazines and newspapers, Sandiford counts among his influences a variety of associations, collaborations and friendships during that time: with fellow writer and anthologist Brian J. Busby (met at Nicholas Hoare); the animation historian/journalist Emru Townsend (from Vanier College); the poet (and his first publisher) Sonja Skarstedt, and her husband, comics illustrator Geof Isherwood; and poet and English professor Adam Chiles (also met at Nicholas Hoare). College and university professors who left an impression were Lorris Elliott, Ariel Fenster, Robert Lecker, and Steve Luxton. Luxton suggested he distill his first collection, Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, down to four linked stories from the manuscript’s original thirteen.
Sandiford’s writing has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, The Antigonish Review, Callaloo, Caribbean Travel & Life, The Caribbean Writer, The Comics Journal, Eidos, and The Globe and Mail, among other publications. From 1997 to 2001, he was the associate literary editor then arts and entertainment editor of the Nation newspaper in Barbados. His memoir Sand for Snow was based on The Onlooker, a popular column he wrote for the Nation from 1996 to 1999.
While at the Nation, he worked closely with senior editor Ridley Greene, political columnist Albert Brandford, arts reporter Carolle Bourne, “noted Caribbean writer” John Wickham, and the poet Linda M. Deane. Their individual example further shaped his view and practice of journalism. Deane and Sandiford, because of their responsibilities on the arts and entertainment desk, became regular collaborators.
Shortly after his departure from the newspaper, Sandiford began to work as a correspondent for Thomson Reuters covering news out of Barbados (2001-2021). He has also produced documentaries and award-winning animated shorts about the Caribbean with Warm Water Productions, whose other two partners are the director Esther Jones and his wife. In 2003, he founded with Deane (who had since left the Nation) the publishing company ArtsEtc Inc. Among their titles, under their AE Books imprint, are the groundbreaking Shouts from the Outfield: The ArtsEtc Cricket Anthology (2007) and Green Readings: Barbados, The First Five Years (2008-2012) (2012).
The Tree of Youth, winner of Barbados’ Governor General’s Award of Excellence in Literary Arts; And Sometimes They Fly, recipient of a Barbados Manufacturers Association “Brands of Barbados” Award; and Sand for Snow, shortlisted for the Frank Collymore Literary Award, are perhaps Sandiford’s most widely read works in prose. His erotic graphic novels for NBM Publishing—Attractive Forces, Stray Moonbeams and Great Moves—have been called “imaginably simple [yet] also imaginatively complex” by Canadian poet and novelist George Elliott Clarke. Both his fiction and non-fiction have appeared in various anthologies.
Since 2001, he has taught research methods part-time in the Division of Fine Arts at Barbados Community College. He is the current associate editor of the Montreal-based Kola: A Black Literary Magazine featuring African-Canadian and international literature. Fairfield: The Last Sad Stories of G. Brandon Sisnett from DC Books is his most recent collection of short fiction.
Themes & writing
“From an early age, I reacted to the world in words, usually on a page. So I am what I always wanted to be, a writer,” wrote Sandiford in a brief essay on why he writes. His earliest work favours Afro-Caribbean archetypes. Noteworthy concerns in his writing have been the effects of family and folklore, erotic love, and community history/collective memory on the individual. The region his characters occupy usually influences or determines how these effects play out. Sandiford is most interested, however, in “people as people.” Any distinctions made in his stories, both fiction and non-fiction, are rather between the multiple meanings of “Home” and “Back Home” for immigrants (and their descendants), particularly those from Barbados and the Caribbean to Canada.
The collision of different cultural sensibilities, and of class and race, that they encounter can trigger the will to survive whatever the adversity. This may be admirable, but his characters also suspect that survival itself on any landscape is not triumph enough. The necessity and unreliability, not to mention the questionable use and abuse, of collective memory in this process is a pervasive problem his characters need to solve: “What remained of a place once the young had left and the old had died...besides the memories? If no one was there to remember, did even these?” Trouble, struggle, isolation, violence, and death for those of the Diaspora form part of the answer in several cases: sometimes these occur casually and unavoidably, sometimes in subtle or unanticipated ways. "Everything dies. Almost." The challenge and choice his characters face is to use their powers for good in a world where people’s second instinct too often is to destroy others or what they have built.
All of Sandiford’s books of fiction feature recurring characters that form a loose universe. These characters are usually members of the Barbadian-Canadian Cumberbatch family or part of the demimonde of his private investigator, McDuff, also of Bajan extraction. They reside in LaSalle, on the Island of Montreal, where Sandiford grew up. Many of his stories are set in his hometown.
Since living in Barbados (he became a citizen by descent in 1996), much of his writing has examined reverse migration, i.e., the movement of the adult children of Bajans “back to” their parents’ home. Contemporary Barbadian authors who have also written about this aspect of the “returning national” phenomenon include Linda M. Deane, Charmaine “Nailah Folami Imoja” Gill and Gary Jerome Jones.
Sandiford started out essentially as a social realist in fiction, but increasingly the fantastic has found its way into his work. The latter development may be more graphic novel-coloured than tinged by magical realism or conventional sci-fi. Guyanese writer Mark McWatt has described his prose as “spare, masculine.” George Elliott Clarke has called Sandiford’s writing “a cross between [that of] Joe Conrad and V.S. Naipaul…breathtakingly clear….” The Vincentian novelist H. Nigel Thomas has compared his “beautifully wrought prose…oftentimes lyrical, [to] Toni Morrison’s (without her prolixity) and James Baldwin’s.” These observations, which further reflect Sandiford's concerns as a writer, are true of his creative non-fiction, journalism and reviews as well.
Among other writers who have influenced his work and worldview are Kamau Brathwaite, Robert Cormier, Emily Dickinson, George Lamming, Alan Moore, Alice Munro, Trevor Von Eden, and Joel Yanofsky.
Personal life
Sandiford married Delores Hunte in 1996. They have a daughter, Aeryn.
ArtsEtc, the publishing company he runs with Linda M. Deane, sponsored the NIFCA Winning Words Anthology for Barbados’ National Cultural Foundation (NCF) from 2010-2021. Their company has co-sponsored with US-based Barbadian author Ronald A. Williams, again through the NCF, the Carolle Bourne Award for Literary Innovation. ArtsEtc has also been involved in literacy education in primary and secondary schools, the promotion of sports, visual arts patronage, and environmental awareness initiatives through the hosting of its Green Readings series with Barbados’ environment ministry.
Sandiford is a board member of the Barbados Copyright Agency (B-COPY) and the Caribbean Reproduction Rights Organisations’ Agency (CARROSA), which deal with the protection and licensing of copyrighted content by Barbadian and Caribbean writers, publishers and artists.
Mentoring is another of his interests. He has participated in the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s Mentorship Program, and has offered guidance to many younger (and a few older) writers in Barbados and elsewhere.
Appreciative of both sand and snow, Sandiford still divides his time between Canada and Barbados.
REFERENCES
Ali, J. (2006, November 10). Love, etc. Caribbean Review of Books, pp. 28-29.
Barkley, D. (Spring 2016). The secret lives of writers. Montreal Review of Books, 49, 11, 15. Retrieved from https://mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviews/fairfield/
Clarke, G. E. (2015, February 22). Clarke: Greek myth visits Barbados. The Chronicle Herald. Retrieved from https://repeatingislands.com/2015/03/04/robert-edison-sandiford-greek-my...
Goodman, K. (2006, April 23). The tree of youth, an exploration of human desire. The Barbados Advocate, p. 37.
The High Commission for Barbados to Canada. (2010). Some Barbadian Canadians: A biographical dictionary. Ottawa, ON: Author.
Joyette, A. T. (2000). A candid interview with young Canadian fiction writer Robert Edison Sandiford who presently lives in Barbados. Kola, 12.2. Retrieved from https://go.gale.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA191999989&sid=googleScholar&...
Sander, P. (2004, Jul/Aug). An island is a world. Caribbean Beat. Retrieved from http://dcbooks.ca/sandforsnow.html
Sandiford, R.E. (2006). Robert Sandiford. In H. N. Thomas (Ed.), Why we write: Conversations with African Canadian poets and novelists (pp. 224-238). Toronto, ON: TSAR.
Sandiford, R. E. (2009, September 9). What writing has meant to me (of late) [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/2009/09/in-my-own-words-robert-edison...
Selman, M. (2004, April 23). Moods and, yes, emotions. Groove/Nation, p. 5.
Thomas, H. N. (2008, April 4). The tree of youth and other stories. Montreal Community Contact, p. 21.
Thomas, H. N. (2013). Fly with Sandiford. The Caribbean Writer, 27, 322-324.
Thomas, H. N. (2016, March). Robert Edison Sandiford’s Fairfield: The last sad stories of G. Brandon Sisnett. Montreal Community Contact, p. 24.
Wickham, J. (1996, April 28). Distant drums: Bajan writer chronicles his Canadian connection. SunShine Magazine/Nation, p. 11.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Prose Fiction
• 12 X 93—1993 (with Sonja Skarstedt & Brian J. Busby)
• Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall: Stories—1995
• The Tree of Youth and Other Stories—2005
• Intimacy 101: Rooms & Suites—2013
• And Sometimes They Fly: A Novel—2013
• Fairfield: The Last Sad Stories of G. Brandon Sisnett—2015
Graphic Novels
• Attractive Forces—1997 (with Justin Norman)
• Stray Moonbeams—2002 (with Justin Norman & Brandon Graham)
• Great Moves—2010 (with Geof Isherwood)
Prose Non-Fiction
• Sand for Snow: A Caribbean-Canadian Chronicle—2003
Anthologies
• Shouts from the Outfield: The ArtsEtc Cricket Anthology—2007 (with Linda. M. Deane)
• Green Readings: Barbados, The First Five Years (2008-2012)—2012 (with Linda. M. Deane)
AWARDS
• The Lionel Shapiro Award (Fiction)—1990
• The Harold Hoyte Award for Achievement in Magazine Editing (The Nation)—2001
• The E.L. Cozier Award for Best Editing (The Nation)—2001
• Governor General’s Award of Excellence in Literary Arts (“Reckoning”)—2003
• Frank Collymore Literary Award shortlist, 4th Place (Sand for Snow)—2003
• Frank Collymore Literary Award shortlist, 2nd Place (The Tree of Youth)—2005
• Governor General’s Award of Excellence in Literary Arts (The Tree of Youth)—2006
• Governor General’s Award of Excellence in Literary Arts (“Massiah”)—2011
• Barbados Manufacturers Association “Brands of Barbados” Award (And Sometimes They Fly)—2013
Other Reading: Essays, Reviews & Intros
• “It All Adds Up”—1999
• “Love & Subjugation in Ho Che Anderson”—2005
• Redemption in Indigo, Barbadian Launch—2008
• “Books, Race and Politics”—2011
• “Writing the Caribbean Superhero Novel”—2013
• “Doing the Best We Can”—2015
• “Daring to Disturb the Multiverse”—2018
• “For the Days After COVID-19”—2020
Last Modified: December 14, 2021
