Biography

Evan Jones (29 December 1927 – 18 April 2023) was an influential Jamaican playwright, poet and novelist. He is best known for his screenplay for Wake in Fright (1971), a Palme d'Or nominated, 2009 Cannes Classic championed by Martin Scorsese; it is one of only two films to ever be screened twice at the festival. Jones was the recipient of the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for The Fight Against Slavery (1975), a limited series created and presented by him for the BBC. He is also the writer of Madhouse on Castle Street (1963), a television play which featured the acting début of Bob Dylan. Over the course of his career, Jones collaborated with a number of notable figures of twentieth century cinema, including Harold Pinter, John Huston, Michael Caine, Dirk Bogarde, Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers, Sylvester Stallone and Max von Sydow. Jones' archive is held by the Bodleian Library at his alma mater, the University of Oxford, who displayed his poetry as part of their 2024–5 exhibition Write Cut Rewrite.