In 2011, Ben Stubenberg left his government job as a defense analyst in Washington, D.C. and moved to the Turks and Caicos Islands. The move had been a long time coming--almost a half century since he had lived on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands in the mid-1970s, where he taught high school English and wrote for the local newspaper. As a private pilot back then, Ben took the opportunity to visit just about every island in the West Indies and later spent months living in Martinique and Haiti. The Caribbean seeped easily into his veins.
As a feature writer for the Turks and Caicos magazine, Times of the Islands, Ben delves deeply into the region's rich and alluring past and chronicles today's unfolding developments and remarkable personalities that are shaping the future. Ben's connection with the Caribbean comes as no surprise. He grew up in vastly different multi-cultural environments, from Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was born, to Oslo, Norway, to Stockton, California, and learned to move easily between different peoples and landscapes--often as an outsider looking in, sometimes as an insider given access to tell a story. The Jamaican Bobsled Captain: Dudley "Tal" Stokes and the untold story of struggle, suffering and redemption behind Cool Runnings is Ben's first book. He can be reached through his website BenStubenberg.com