Merle Hodge (born in 1944) is a scholar and novelist. Born in Calcutta Settlement, Trinidad and Tobago, she studied and travelled abroad for years. She afterwards returned to the Caribbean where she currently holds a position at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad. She wrote numerous works of literary criticism and two novels. The first, Crick Crack Monkey, has often been studied as an important example of post-colonial fiction. Her other novel is 'The Life of Laetitia.'