Anthony Winkler

Anthony C. Winkler (25 February 1942 – 18 September 2015) was a successful Jamaican novelist and popular contributor to many post-secondary English literary texts. His first novel The Painted Canoe (1986), although taking the most time to write and publish, was his most rewarding, allowing him to move on and produce his best known book, The Lunatic (1987), which earned him a spot on the bestseller list. He also co-authored a number of English grammar textbooks, and other non-fiction works.

Anthony C. Winkler was born in Kingston, Jamaica, where he lived until he was eight years old. He then moved to Montego Bay in St. James the following year, only to return to Kingston to live with his grandparents a year later. He went on to attend three different secondary schools: Excelsior College in Kingston, and then Mt. Alvernia Academy and Cornwall College, both in Montego Bay.

After high school, Winkler moved back to Kingston, where he obtained employment as an accounting clerk for a few businesses around the city. At the age of 21, he left Jamaica for the United States to pursue his B.A., graduating in 1967, and then completing an M.A. in 1968.

Upon graduation, he taught briefly at Pasadena City College, before collaborating with JoRay McCuen-Metherell, a department head at Glendale Community College (California) whom he met while selling textbooks. They got together to write and had a 40-plus year relationship writing all the textbooks except for his first, Poetry As System. Winkler had worked as a textbook salesman in California and realised that he could improve the quality of the writing in the textbooks that he was trying to sell. He submitted two chapters, for which he was rewarded a thousand dollars as a first book advance.

Winkler's literature has been published and sold all over the world. More famous for his novels and two screenplays, he has also contributed to a number of post-secondary English textbooks for almost four decades. Writing textbooks has been his full-time job, writing fiction has been his second job.

Along with the series of novels that Winkler published throughout his career, there are also a few autobiographical works, but none more important than Going Home to Teach. This book is about the experiences Anthony and his wife, Cathy, share when returning to Jamaica to work at a teacher trainer college in 1975.

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