Celeste has been a lawyer since 2001 but she has been telling stories all her life.
A native of Trinidad and Tobago, in 2016, she graduated from Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, with an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction). Celeste's goal is to dispel all myths about island-life and island-people, and to showcase the musicality and resonance of Trinidadian creole (kriol).
Her work has appeared in The New England Review, Litmag, Epiphany, The Rumpus, among other places. She is the recipient of a 2018 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She was also awarded the 2019 Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction, and the 2017 John D Gardner Memorial Prize for Fiction.
Her debut novel Pleasantview won the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.
Ahead of its publication in the Caribbean and the UK, a story from her current novel-in-stories Ever Since We Small was shortlisted for the 2024 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.