McKay, Claude (1889-1948)

Jamaican-born US poet and novelist. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. His poetry, especially the collection Harlem Shadows (1922), set the tone for black writers for the whole decade, and his novel Home to Harlem (1928) was a best-seller.

In the West Indies he wrote dialect verse - Songs of Jamaica (1911), Constab Ballads (1912) - and in the USA he worked as a Pullman porter while writing.