PAMELA MORDECAI was born and grew up in Jamaica. Though she didn't live there, her grandparents' house, across from the cholera graveyard and near General Penitentiary on Tower Street in Kingston was the house of her childhood. She went to Alpha Academy, a school in downtown Kingston that stressed creative and performing arts. House, school, graveyard and prison have found their way into her writing over the years. She graduated with a degree in English from a small Catholic women's college in Massachusetts and, returning to Jamaica, taught, became involved in theatre and modern dance, and began writing seriously. From the University of the West Indies at Mona, she obtained two teaching diplomas, and, eventually, a PhD in English. She has taught, trained teachers, worked as a TV host, a writer-researcher, an editor, a book packager and a publisher. Her writing encompasses newspaper editorials; dance criticism; some fifteen textbooks; articles on Caribbean literature; studies on Caribbean culture, education and publishing; poems and stories for children; poems and short stories for adults; and a play for young people called El Numero Uno or the Pig from Lopinot. She recently completed Pink Icing, a collection of short stories, and is currently at work on Cypher, a novel. A prolific anthologist with a special interest in the writing of Caribbean women, she has edited/co-edited several anthologies of poetry, and, with her sister Elizabeth Wilson, Her True-True Name, a ground-breaking anthology of women's fiction.

Pam and her husband Martin live in Toronto. She is a member of the Society of Authors (UK) and the Writers Union of Canada.