Marlon James, Wolmer’s Boys past student, longlisted again for the Booker Prize
July 28, 2026
Marlon James, a past student of Wolmer’s Trust High School for Boys, has been longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize for his novel The Disappearers.
James won the Man Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, the first Jamaican writer to do so. The Guardian, writing that week, recorded that he “attended Wolmer’s Boys, one of Kingston’s prestigious boys’ schools.” The New Yorker later described his years at Wolmer’s Trust High School for Boys.
James was born in Kingston in 1970, read language and literature at the University of the West Indies (1991), and teaches at Macalester College in Minnesota. He received a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica and was named to TIME’s 100 in 2019.
Source: The Booker Prizes, July 28, 2026. Republished for the Wolmer’s Trust community with attribution.
Also: The Guardian, 15 October 2015; The New Yorker, 28 January 2019; Jamaica Gleaner, 20 May 2019.
