Born in St. Vincent, Carolle Bourne moved to Trinidad as a young woman and enjoyed a career composing advertising copy before going on to journalism in the United States, where she divided her time between caring for her two sons and writing fashion promotions for Lits of Philadelphia and Gimbels of New York.

After returning to the Caribbean in 1974, she settled in Barbados, concentrating on short fiction, poetry and art reviews for the local press, including the Advocate and the Nation newspapers. She won the Kamau Brathwaite Award for Poetry in 2002. The previous year, Saraband was the recipient of a Frank Collymore Literary Endowment, Barbados’ most prestigious arts award.