Trinidad-born musician, writer and activist Antonio Michael Downing is one of five authors who has been selected for the new RBC Taylor Emerging Writers Mentorship Program.

The program is made available to non-fiction writers who are selected in partnership with a national network of university and college writing programs.

Downing who  hails  from South Trinidad, is a student at the University of Waterloo.

Student authors selected for the mentorship program are required to have an existing body of work and a non-fiction manuscript that is close to completion.

Downing’s non-fiction manuscript,Buttahfly, is a memoir of his obsession “for radical identity transformations.”

The other authors selected for the program are Christopher Brown,  Gena Ellett, Stephanie Harrington and Martha Roberts.