Listen here: [audio:May2012/nash.mp3]

Peta-Gaye Nash started the Jamaica 50 series at the Toronto Public Library  with readings from her short story collection, I Too Hear the Drums. She is a short-story and children’s book author born and raised in Jamaica; she now lives in Mississauga.

In this podcast, recorded at the Maria A. Shchuka library branch in the West Indian neighbourhood of Eglinton Avenue West on April 14, Nash tells of how she came to be a writer, inspired by the down-to-earth language of short stories in the Jamaica Observer newspaper. Her stories–always told in the first person, but rarely purely autobiographical– are emotional, personal narratives about everyday life in Jamaica, immigrating to Canada and confronting stereotypes about what “real” Jamaicans are like, and struggling to write in the midst of a full life.