Tracey Baptiste

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-27

Tracey Baptiste was born March 7, 1972, in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago, and relocated to Brooklyn, New York, at age fifteen. She earned a BA in English and Comparative Literature followed by an M.Ed. in elementary education from New York University. Baptiste began her professional life as an elementary school teacher before moving into textbook editing; she now lives in New Jersey and teaches in Lesley University's creative writing MFA program. Her children's horror novels draw heavily on Caribbean folklore, most notably The Jumbies series (2015–2019), which reimagines Caribbean folk monsters for young readers. She also wrote Minecraft: The Crash (2018), which debuted on the New York Times bestseller list, the illustrated children's book Because Claudette (2022), and the nonfiction title African Icons: Ten People Who Built a Continent (2021). A forthcoming novel, Kid X, is scheduled for 2026. Baptiste is known for centering Caribbean culture and folklore in stories for young readers, and she frequently speaks and writes about diversifying children's literature. Her work has helped bring Caribbean mythology, previously underrepresented in mainstream children's publishing, to a wide international audience of young readers.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Jumbies (2015) · The Jumbies Core Canon
• Rise of the Jumbies (2017) · The Jumbies Core Canon
• The Jumbie God's Revenge (2020) · The Jumbies Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 3 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 0 (None recorded)

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