Colin Channer's most recent book is the poetry collection Providential (2015), which Eileen Myles describes as "one of the most lucid and telling poetry books of this exact time." Other work includes the novella The Girl With the Golden Shoes (2007) — "a nearly perfect moral fable" in the words of Russell Banks. Colin's first book Waiting in Vain was a Critic's Choice Selection of the Washington Post, which marked it as "a clear redefinition of the Caribbean novel in which the discourses of post-colonialism have been usurped by the creative assurance of reggae's aesthetic ..." Colin has served as Newhouse Professor in Creative Writing at Wellesley College and Fannie Hurst Writer in Residence at Brandeis University. His honors include fellowships in poetry and fiction from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and a Musgrave Medal in Literature. He founded the not-for-profit Calabash International Literary Festival Trust with Kwame Dawes and Justine Henzell, and served as artistic director and board chairman from 2000 until 2010.  

Channer joined the Department of Literary Arts as Assistant Professor of Literary Arts in July 2016.