New partnerships for NGC Bocas Lit Fest

The Caribbean Literature Action Group (CALAG) will be launched in Port-of-Spain at a one-day brainstorm workshop on Wednesday April 25, on the eve of the 2012 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

The Caribbean has produced some of the world’s greatest contemporary writers, including three Nobel Prize laureates. Its literature is one of the region’s most celebrated cultural products. But Caribbean writers continue to migrate to North America and Europe in order to obtain financial support for their work and to achieve the highest level of international recognition. Literary publishing within the region remains in an embryonic state, and talented writers who choose to stay “at home” often find it difficult to access international publishers, or find opportunities for local publication and promotion.

In light of these common interests, the British Council and Commonwealth Writers have now developed a plan to work in partnership with the NGC Bocas Lit Fest and other literary professionals in the region.

The first stage is to assemble a small, results-oriented action group of professionals from all areas of the Caribbean literary sector: writers, publishers, editors, teachers, booksellers, and organisers of festivals and writing programmes.

Participants include publishers such as Linda Speth of UWI Press and Lasana Sekou of House of Nehesi; Justine Henzell, co-founder of the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica; Esther Phillips of the new BIM literature festival in Barbados and Gracelyn Cassell of the Alliougana Festival in Montserrat; Funso Aiyejina of the Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop in Trinidad; and writers Kei Miller of Jamaica and Kendel Hippolyte of St Lucia. International participants include Ellah Allfrey (deputy editor of Granta) and Jeremy Poynting (Peepal Tree Press). Facilitators for the action group include Nicholas Laughlin (editor of The Caribbean Review of Books), Linda Leith (founder of Blue Metropolis Bleu in Quebec), Anita Sethi (writer), and Susie Nicklin (Director of Literature, British Council).

The NGC Bocas Lit Fest is an annual literary festival held in Trinidad and Tobago on the last weekend in April. It is the largest literary festival in the Anglophone Caribbean and provides a unique forum for bringing international and Caribbean writers at home and abroad together with their readers.

The Festival programme includes readings, performance poetry, discussions, debates, workshops, film screenings, book launches and signings, a children’s programme, and the presentation of the annual OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

The NGC Bocas Lit Fest is a non-profit organisation that receives supporting sponsorship from OCM and KFC. Sponsors include the Commonwealth Foundation, First Citizens Bank, Courts Trinidad Limited, and flow.

The Ministry of Arts and Multiculturalism, TDC, and NLCB provide public funding.