Born in Trinidad in 1964, Walcott-Hackshaw studied in the United States, returning to Trinidad in 1992. She holds a bachelor's degree in English and French Literature from
Boston University, and after completing her PhD in 1995, she went on to join the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the
University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine Campus, in 1999. In 2021, she was appointed Public Orator at UWI St. Augustine, a three-year post. She has co-edited several books and has written scholarly essays and articles particularly on Francophone Caribbean literature. Her first collection of short stories,
Four Taxis Facing North, was published in 2007, later being translated into Italian.
The Caribbean Review of Books noted of Walcott-Hackshaw's stories: "...the fact that she presents characters who are at once insiders and outsiders makes for a complex and interesting portrait of class and race in contemporary Trinidadian society." Her first novel,
Mrs. B, was published in 2014, when it was shortlisted for the “Best Book Fiction” in the
Guyana Prize for Caribbean Literature.
Arnold Rampersad described the book as "richly entertaining", and said: "Walcott-Hackshaw offers a vigorous, at times sizzling, prose that is grounded in local rhythms and allusions to the culture that is at once both the object of her love and also her main target." She has published book reviews and creative writing in such journals as
The Caribbean Review of Books and
Small Axe, and her short stories have been widely translated as well as anthologized, including in
Trinidad Noir: The Classics, edited by
Earl Lovelace and
Robert Antoni (2017), and
New Daughters of Africa, edited by
Margaret Busby (2019). ==Selected publications==