Born in Cuba, Sylvia Wynter is a Jamaican novelist, playwright and essayist. Wynter graduated from Kings College, University of London with her M.A. thesis on Spanish drama. After a period in London writing plays for radio, she became a lecturer at the University of the West Indies, and later taught at the universities of Michigan and California. In 1977 she became Professor of African and Afro-American Studies at Stanford University. Wynter's plays, which remain largely unpublished, include Shh…It's aWedding (produced 1961), 1865, Ballad of a Rebellion (produced 1965), and Maskarade (produced 1979).