Author Interview: Alexis Keir
Q&A with the contributors from our latest issue.
Alexis Keir grew up in Luton and now lives in Kent. His parents came to the UK in 1960 from the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent where Alexis also spent part of his childhood. His book Windward Family, which was published in 2023, explores the lives of Vincentians who have come to England over generations. Alexis has been selected previously for Spread The Word’s London Writers Awards and the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. His writing has also been published in The Selkie and The Caribbean Writer. His piece ‘A Journey in Ten Parts’ appears in Hinterland Issue 16.
What’s the last thing (except for this!) that you wrote?
I jotted down words from a conversation with my aunty in Luton who is in her 80s about baking and cooking back in the village of Dickson in Saint Vincent where she and my mum grew up… Uncle Percy, Backlot, Dutch pot, charcoal…
What’s a recent discovery that you can’t keep quiet about?
My friend Sue Hann who I met on the London Writers Awards will have her first book Palingenesis published in April (Neem Tree Press) and having already seen Sue’s brilliant writing I am so excited to read it. It will be a memoir told through essays of one woman’s experiences undergoing fertility treatment, and how she finds solace in writing, art, and the world around her.
Words to live by?
Every story has a home.
Tell us something about yourself that surprises people...
I'm a big Luton Town supporter but my favourite sport to watch (and play) is hockey.
What’s your piece in this issue about?
My piece is bookended by the racist riots in the UK last summer and an unsettling encounter I had on a train journey. Both highlight the things that can make people feel they have a place and that they belong – and the things that can take those feelings away.
Issue 16 is available to order over at our webstore now, or in good bookshops.