Passion!

Heather Nicolette Barker wants to be a best-selling author when she grows up. So she's been scribbling a collection of short stories and penning inspirational essays.

In 2008 Heather won the George Lamming Prize for Literary Excellence, one of the top prizes in Barbados’ National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA), for her short story Letter to Dee.

Her articles have been published in Easy Magazine (Barbados), Shabeau (regional) and other publications. In 1998 Heather plunged headfirst (without any floatation devices) into the intricacies of writing, designing and programming for the ubiquitous World Wide Web earning an MSc in Electronic Publishing from City University, London, England.

Heather was born and raised in London on jam tarts and the BBC, before relocating with her family to Barbados and being branded a “returning national”. Despite the repetitive nocturnal shrieks of whistling frogs and crickets, she calls Barbados home.

Read print feature on Heather's writing in EASY magazine"

Extract from Letter to Dee....

Dear Dee,

You sauntered into my thoughts today. I was looking at your photo, the one in the rusting frame on the mahogany bureau in my mother’s house. You were in the park after church on Christmas morning, your eyes pregnant with hope. I going to be a famous photographer, actress,even writer. Your head turns and rests on your shoulder, in obedience to the photographer. Your favourite plait, the long softer one, is segregated with a ribbon the colour of Christmas. Girl, you too know how to look good for the camera!

Then I remembered the words pelted at you in school from those sweaty boys. And I want to remind you that your lips are ripe mango flesh, not rubber tyres like they say. That your legs are strong as they pump the pedal of the sewing machine, even if they get called currant slices because of the scars left from sand flies feasting on your skin. That your nose is regal, not flattened like this island’s hills.

When your mother says, Wha’ doan kill, does fatten, don’t believe her, because what don’t kill you one way, will get you another. Instead, know that hurt boys hurt girls, and that the insults they fast bowl at you on the pasture are because, deep down, they are ashamed of who and whose they are....