Christine Benjamin

"I am a writer. When I am happy, I write. When I am sad, I write. When I feel hurt, abused, disrespected, raped, I write. With every emotion conceived, paper is my solace, weapon or victim. I never know where the story leads. My subconsciousness literally crafts out detail that sometimes is emotionally wounding and surprises me every-time." Christine Benjamin was born on a twenty-nine mile long coastally influenced island in the Caribbean. "In the early 1980's, as a child, we had no electricity in my grandmother's village. My summer days in Capuchin was always filled. There was never time to get into trouble. Mama hated to see anyone sitting down. After all the chores were done, she would give me a huge bag, which once contained rice, or sugar, but it had been washed and dried out in other to be re-used. In this bag, I would have to pick up mango leaves which kept shedding from the trees in the cool summer breeze. Such a perpetual task. The more I picked up leaves in a feeble attempt to keep the yard clean, the more leaves fell. At night supper was heavy, and the thick blanketed darkness filled rapidly with fireflies and noisy Crickets giving the night a different kind of vividity. Just before bed, mama would sit us down to scare my cousins and I with one of her stories. They were all a mixture of fantasy and horror." She is a relentless writer and publisher, who harbors astonishing expertise in contorting words that wring out satire from her books. She does yoga, gardening and enjoys observing life untangle its' ambiguities. Christine presently lives in Dominica with her two children, Nassim and Yummy. She is currently working whimsically on other titles.