Wayne Brown read English at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica and lived mainly between the two countries since then. His books include On The Coast (Andre Deutsch, 1973) which was awarded the Commonwealth Prize for Poetry; Edna Manley: The Private Years (Andre Deutsch, 1976), a biography of the Jamaican sculptress; a second volume of poems, Voyages (Inprint Caribbean, 1989); and The Child of the Sea (Inprint Caribbean, 1990), like his later Landscape with Heron (Observer Literary Books, 2000), a collection of short stories and remembrances. He edited Derek Walcott: Selected Poetry (Heinemann Caribbean, 1981) and several anthologies of Jamaican fiction and poetry.
Wayne Brown was Gregory Fellow in Poetry at the University of Leeds, England, a Fulbright Scholar in the US, and a Fellow of Yaddo, MacDowell, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation.