Ian Strachan

IAN GREGORY STRACHAN is Vice President of Advancement and Professor of English at The College of The Bahamas.  He holds an AA in English and Literature from The College of The Bahamas, and a Teacher's Certificate from the University of the West Indies (1988), a BA in English from Morehouse College (1990) and an MA (1993) and PhD (1995) in English from the University of Pennsylvania.  He is a former Research Fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia (1998-1999) and a former Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (1999-2001).  He served as Chair of the School of English Studies at COB from 2004-2007.   His book, Paradise and Plantation: Tourism and Culture in the Anglophone Caribbean, was published in 2002 and discusses the politics of tourism in the region.  He is a poet, playwright, novelist and filmmaker. His first novel, God's Angry Babies was published in 1997.

He has written and directed a number of plays, including No Seeds in Babylon (1991), which appears in the anthology Contemporary Drama for the Caribbean (2001) and Diary of Souls (1999).  In 1996 he founded the Track Road Theatre Foundation and served as its Director until 2006. In 2007 his poetry was included in the anthology New Caribbean Poetry (Carcanet  2007).  He wrote and directed his first film, Show Me Your Motion: The Ringplay Games of The Bahamas in 2006.  In 2007 this documentary was featured in the UNESCO Caribbean Traveling Film Showcase.

He was the author of the popular newspaper column "East Street Blues" which appeared each week in The Nassau Guardian between 2006 and 2011.  He was the host of the daily public affairs talk show, "The Nation Today" in 2009 on GEMS 105.9FM in Nassau.  He was also a founder and member of the civil society advocacy group, the 1962 Foundation.  He hosted the current affairs television programme, "The Exchange," on ZNS TV13  in 2012 and is the writer, producer and director of the television series, "Gippie's Kingdom."  He is also the director/producer of the documentary I's Man: Manhood in The Bahamas.