Lucilda Hunter, née Caulker (15 July 1943 – 21 August 2022) was a Sierra Leonean librarian, novelist and biographer, who wrote under the name Yema Lucilda Hunter.^[1]

Life

Yema Lucilda Hunter was born on 15 July 1943 in Freetown,^[1] to parents Richard Edmund Kelfa-Caulker (the first African principal of the Albert Academy, who later became a diplomat, serving as Sierra Leone High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ambassador to the United States) and Olivette Hannah Stuart (from a prominent African-Caribbean family, whose grandfather, Melvin Stuart, came from the Bahamas in 1878 to work for the colonial administration).^[2] She was educated at the Annie Walsh Memorial School,^[3] before undertaking university studies in England. She gained a BA degree from the University of Reading in 1964, a post-graduate diploma in librarianship from North-Western Polytechnic in 1966, and a master's degree in philosophy from Loughborough University.^[1]

Hunter worked as a librarian at the Sierra Leone Library Board, in the Medical Library at Connaught Hospital in Freetown, and with the World Health Organization in Brazzaville.^[1] She took early retirement in 1999, and that year was made a fellow of the Library Association.

She lived with her husband in Accra, Ghana,^[3] where she died, aged 79, on 21 August 2022.^[2]

Works

• 1982.  Road to Freedom.  Ibadan: African Universities Press. (Later reissued in 2016 as Finding Freedom.)
• 1989.  Bittersweet.  London: Macmillan.
• 2006.  Redemption Song.  Freetown: Sierra Leonean Writers Series.
• 2012.  Joy Came in the Morning, typewritten pre-publication circulation of Chapter One.
• 2013.  Joy Came in the Morning. Accra: Sierra Leonean Writers Series.
• 2014.  Nanna.  Sierra Leonean Writers Series.
• 2015.  An African Treasure: In Search of Gladys Casely-Hayford. Freetown: Sierra Leonean Writers Series.
• 2018. Her Name Was Aina.  Freetown: Sierra Leonean Writers Series.
• 2022.  Deep Waters. Freetown: Sierra Leonean Writers Series.

References