Amanda Smyth is Irish-Trinidadian, and author of three novels. Her first novel, Black Rock, was based on the murder of her great-grandfather in Trinidad in the 1950s. Black Rock won the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger, was nominated for an NAACP award, shortlisted for the McKitterick prize, and selected as an Oprah Winfrey Summer Read. Her second novel, A Kind of Eden, set in contemporary Trinidad, was optioned as a TV series. Fortune, her third, was based on the tragic Dome fire in Trinidad in 1928. Fortune was shortlisted for the Walter Scott prize 2022. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in New Writing, The London Magazine, the Times Literary Supplement, and Harvard Review.
Amanda has worked with children aged 9–16 running writing workshops in Stratford-upon-Avon, as part of Sparks Young Writers. In 2020, before Covid, Amanda began an initiative working with Age UK, running creative-writing workshops for older students interested in writing about their lives. She also teaches at Arvon and in Skyros, Greece.
Before becoming a writer, Amanda Smyth worked as an actress, touring with theatre companies, then later, in television and commercials.
Amanda is available in Exeter College two days a week to help undergraduate and graduate students with their writing, irrespective of their area of study.
