Zee Edgell Biography

Belizean novelist, born in Belize City, educated at Regent Street Polytechnic and the University of the West Indies. After working as a schoolteacher and newspaper editor, she became the Director of the Belizean administration's Department of Women's Affairs and has been an educational consultant since 1990. Beka Lamb (1982), her first novel and the first Belizean work of fiction to attract international notice, parallels the growth to maturity and independence of its female protagonist with the emergence and consolidation of Belize's sense of national identity. Like its predecessor, Edgell's second novel, In Times Like These (1991), conflates personal and national themes in its account of a well-educated Belizean woman's political involvements upon returning to her native country on the eve of Independence.