Elder Nana Farika Berhane… was born Norma Hamilton in Kingston, Jamaica. She is a writer of fiction, plays poetry, television and radio scripts, an editor/journalist, researcher and educator and a mother of four youths (a computer lecturer, an international aids worker, an artist and a musician) Her work is well known in the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. Her novel “The Story of Sandra Shaw,” was at the heart of the Cultural Revolution in literary expression and experience taking place in Jamaica and the Caribbean during the seventies. Extracts of the novel won prizes in literary contests and are published in literary magazines. Her play won first prize in Jamaica’s literary festival contest during the seventies. Her poetry is published in Jamaica, Europe and the USA. Her short fiction is published in “Negro Digest,” USA, “Flamingo Magazine, London, “Short Story International” and “Swing Magazine”, Jamaica and ” 22 Prize Winning Festival Short Stories,” “Kingston Publishers, Jamaica. She also has two children readers Language Power 2C and Language Power 3C) published by Kingston publishers. The books are used in the island’s elementary school system. Her lectures on the Maroon people are featured in “The Mother of us All,” by Karla Gottleib p. Africa Press.
She was trained as a journalist at the famous Gleaner newspaper in Jamaica and the London School of Journalism. She worked as a writer and public relations person for the Jamaican Government’s adult literacy programs and as a volunteer literary teacher for sanitation workers. She has received grants from the OAS, the Canadian Save the Children Fund, and Oxfam America for her work among the Jamaican Maroons who she represented. She was a delegate to the Sixth Pan African Congress, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania as a representative of the Pan African Secretariat, Jamaica and as an editor of the Pan African Digest in 1974. She is the director of Queen Omega Communications under which most of her recent poetry has been published.
Farika has won has won grants, certificates and commendations from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, California Poets in Schools, “Poetry Flash” magazine,” National Task Force on Folk Arts in Education, and the Smithsonian Institution for her work as an arts educator, and folklorist. Her students have also won prizes for their work. She worked with California Poets in Schools, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the US Department of Education as well as the California Arts Council during the late seventies and early eighties. The University of the West Indies, Jamaica, the Instituto Allende, Mexico and the Montessori Internationale School trained her in creative writing and early childhood education. Her poetry and that of her students have been selected for inclusion in the soon to be published work, “Saving our Babies,” the anthology of writers of the 21st century, compiled and edited by Professor Sade Turnipseed. Farika is a former member of the Nairobi Institute of Cultural Arts in California. and an ethnographic consultant/researcher for the Smithsonian Institution, and universities on Jamaica’s folk culture. She received certificates of commendation the Caribbean-American Intercultural Society for “keeping the voice of the Maroon people alive in Contemporary Society” and the Keys of the City of Cambridge, on behalf of the Maroon people.
