Sealy, Jasmine

Jasmine Sealy is a Barbadian Canadian writer based in Vancouver. Her work has appeared in The New Quarterly, Adda Stories, Cosmonauts Avenue, Geist, Room, Prairie Fire, and Best Canadian Stories 2021, and she is the former prose editor at Prism international. The Island of Forgetting: A Novel (HarperAvenue) is an intimate saga spanning four generations of one family that runs a beachfront hotel in Barbados. It begins in 1962. Iapetus roams the island, scared and alone, driven mad after witnessing his father’s death at the hands of his mother and his older brother, Cronus. Just before Iapetus is lost forever, he has a son, Atlas. He knows little about the tragic circumstances of his father’s life, so he lives under the care of his uncle, Cronus. The story unfolds with Atlas’ daughter, Calypso, and then, in 2019, her son, Nautilus, who finds himself exiled to Canada after making an impulsive decision. Loosely inspired by Greek mythology, The Island of Forgetting is about the echo of deep, sometimes tragic love, and how a family’s past can haunt its future.