March 31, 2011

Writers Institute @ Miami Dade College: May 4 – 7


Writers Institute at Miami Dade College Offers Classes for the Writer in Everyone
~The workshops are taught by renowned writers and industry professionals, from May 4 – 7

South Florida’s celebrated Writers Institute, presented by the Florida Center for the Literary Arts (FCLA) at Miami Dade College (MDC), kicks-off on May 4 featuring four days of intensive workshops in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plot and more!

In addition, the Writers Institute will host some activities that are open to the public, such as the Pitch-o-rama on May 7 and the daily Lunchtime Reads, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. Free lunch will be served for those registered for at least one Institute workshop. Others can purchase lunch for $8. 

The Pitch-o-rama on Saturday, May 7, at 2 p.m., provides a unique opportunity to pitch your book or idea to a panel of literary agents and other industry professionals. Participation is free. Those not registered for the workshops may sign up starting at 1 p.m.

Manuscript Consultations will be available as well. Get feedback from literary professionals Betsy Lerner, Ayesha Pande or Jill Marr, who will read participants’ work, and meet afterwards for one-on-one, 15-minute consultations. The cost is $80. Space is limited and registration is required. Visit www.floridacenterlitarts.com for full submission guidelines and deadlines.

Seating is very limited, so please register early! Some workshops are already sold out.

THE OPEN WORKSHOPS ARE:  
 
Writing Poetry with Elizabeth Alexander
Meets daily: Wednesday, May 4 - Saturday, May 7, from 9 a.m. - Noon

Immerse yourself in creating and revising poems in all forms. Over the four-class meetings participants will bring in poems to workshop. In-class discussion of these and other poems will lead to assignments that will spur new work and aid in revision.

Writing the Unthinkable with Lynda Barry 
Meets daily: Wednesday, May 4 - Saturday, May 7, from 9 a.m. – Noon

This workshop is designed for non-writers, anyone who has a curiosity about writing and those who have always wanted to write, but have no idea how to begin. All you need is about 100 sheets of notebook paper, a three-ring binder (no other kind will work for this class) and a couple of favorite pens.

Stories from Life with Greg Bottoms   
Meets 3 days: Wednesday, May 4 – Friday, May 6, from 2 – 5 p.m.

Explore the use of memory, fact, autobiography, biography, encounter, incident, and speculation about the real and the possible as a way to begin writing pieces that can develop into full creative nonfiction or fiction stories. Participants will generate material in different ways, experimenting with point of view, narrative distance, etc. The work will be workshopped during class meetings.

Un taller sobre la novella (IN SPANISH ONLY) with Martin Solares  
Meets daily: Wednesday, May 4, - Saturday, May 7, from 9 a.m. – noon

Some of the themes discussed will include what is learned through the novel, how to begin and how to end, the many resources developed by different authors to resolve issues related to time and space. Participants will share their own writing.  

Fees for the workshops:

One three-day workshop: $225 (includes lunch)
One four-day workshop: $250 (includes lunch)
Any two workshops: $400 (includes lunch)
Publishing Q & A with Betsy Lerner: $40 each
Manuscript consultation: $80
The Whole Enchilada – any two workshops, Publishing Q & A, plus one manuscript consultation: $500


Manuscript consultation fees go toward supporting the programs and initiatives of the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College. MDC employees and students enrolled in a degree seeking program receive a discount on all workshops.

Registration for the Writers Institute is ongoing. Some events are on a first-come basis and some classes require early submission of manuscripts. For more information on fees and deadlines, call 305-237-3940 or visit the center’s website at www.flcenterlitarts.com.

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March 30, 2011

21 Days/ 21 Poems: National Poetry Month


I, too, like memes, Blah Blah Blog. So, for National Poetry Month, I’ve repurposed 25 Days/ 25 Poems to 21 Days/ 21 Poems: One poem per day with a short paragraph about why you picked it.


I’ve only posted 21 poems because I assume my readers are decent people who do not think poetry is life and will take a break over the weekends.


If you’d like to join, link back to this post (or leave a comment here) and I’ll try my best to pop over to your site.

Until then, enjoy National Poetry Month.


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Update: 4/1/2011


I will also be broadening the scope of the blog for this month to include poets who were not lucky enough to be born in the Caribbean. But only for this month!

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Author Event: Christian Campbell @ University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.


The Doctoral Program of the Department of English of the College of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico has invited poet Christian Campbell to give a poetry reading and poetry writing workshop on Saturday, April 2nd in the Lewis Richardson Seminar Room, Room #108 in Building Pedreira, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. He will be reading from his poetry collection Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press, 2010). The poetry reading will take place from 9:30-11:45 a.m. and will include a public conversation with poets and professors Dannabang Kuwabong and Loretta Collins. At 2:00- 4:00 p.m., Professor Campbell will be giving a poetry writing workshop for interested participants, also in the Seminar Room. We cordially invite you to attend. Christian Campbell is a brilliant, gifted writer of Trinidadian and Bahamian heritage. Join us in warmly welcoming him to the island.

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christian Campbell is a writer of Bahamian and Trinidadian heritage
. He studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and received a PhD at Duke. His poetry and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies such as Callaloo, Indiana Review, New Caribbean Poetry, New Poetries IV, PN Review, Poetry London, Small Axe, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature, Wasafiri and West Branch. His work has been translated into Spanish in the anthology Poetas del Caribe Ingles.  An Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto, he has received grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Arvon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center and the University of Birmingham. He is also a recipient of a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship. Running the Dusk, named a finalist for the Cave Canem Prize by Sonia Sanchez, has recently been shortlisted for the 2010 Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the 2010 Forward Poetry Prize for the Best First Book in the UK.


BOOK DESCRIPTION

Christian Campbell takes us to dusk, what the French call l’heure entre chien et loup, the hour between dog and wolf, to explore ambiguity and intersection, danger and desire, loss and possibility.  These poems of wild imagination shift shape and shift generation, remapping Caribbean, British and African American geographies: Oxford becomes Oxfraud; Shabba Ranks duets with Césaire; Sidney Poitier is reconsidered in an exam question; market women hawk poetry beside knock-off Gucci bags; elegies for ancestors are also for land and sea.  Here is dancing at the crossroads between reverence and irreverence.   Dusk is memory, dusk is dream, dusk is a way to re-imagine the past.


ADVANCE PRAISE

Running the Dusk gives us a new voice for Caribbean arts and letters, and Christian Campbell is one of the few perfectly suited to accept this mantle. His poems don't address the obvious in a tumultuous, beautiful landscape of hearts and minds, personal and public rituals, but his voice dares to take a step beyond, to bridge the diaspora of the spirit
. If you're holding Running the Dusk in your hands, you are lucky to be facing the gutsy work of a long-distance runner who possesses the wit and endurance, the staying power of authentic genius. This first collection is controlled beauty and strength, and the exhilaration of images and music encountered are necessary and believable.  There's great celebration here.      

--Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize-winning Poet and Global Distinguished Professor of English at NYU


A truly auspicious debut by a brilliant young writer of wide-open ear and versatile tongue
. Campbell’s imagery slices through fog; these poems are nourished by New World etymologies and old-school ways and wisdoms.  His use of poetic form is drum-tight and yet these poems unfold like the infinity of a coast-line, sinuous and generous.  In the black diaspora Campbell writes from and about, “all angels have afros” and all poems are song.  Running the Dusk is deep-souled, keen-eyed, knowing, honed, gorgeous.  This is a heralding book we’ll be talking about for a long time to come.

--Elizabeth Alexander, Obama's Inaugural Poet and Chair of African American Studies at Yale University


What I find remarkable in Christian Campbell’s Running the Dusk is the vibrancy of sound and image throughout the collection. Campbell’s attention to the specifics of terrain (emotional and physical) through color (molasses, rum, bronze, blue chiffon) and through his tonal palette
that distinguishes this book. Campbell shows himself here as a true craftsman.  “… But she is just twirling, / which her singing tells and tells.  It is just that.  / Her plaits are countless today, full of blue / bird barrettes.  All else are staring, /sensible and still. The girl gives a whirl.”  It is wonderful to experience the collision of sounds here, the excitement of telling.  Running the Dusk places Campbell firmly on the map. I cherish this collection and (hear this), I look forward to his next, and next.

--Martha Rhodes, Award-Winning Poet and Founder of Four Way Books


The eight poets brought together in New Caribbean Poetry: An Anthology, edited by Kei Miller (Carcanet, £12.95), present an often dark and complex retort to the cliché of languorous island living, with much sorrow told through the polyglot voices. Christian Campbell stands out with his elastic persona, from astute bystander in the Caribbean to mournful outsider in New York.

--Financial Times

In the community fire everything gets blazed: “straw dolls, Hey Mon/T-shirts, African statues made in Japan…the cries of Prettygirl/and Walcott poems.”  This is Christian Campbell’s “A Dream of Fire.”  A dream where poetry is hawked on the street besides “knock-off Louis Vitton bags.”  There is something very beautiful and very radical about this.  Dear E. M. Roach, this is the thing that was so soft you couldn’t hear.  This is the thing that is saving us.
                                
--Calabash: A Journal of Caribbean Arts and Letters


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Media: The Present Future of Caribbean Literary & Cultural Studies


Podcasts and photos for the Present Future of Caribbean Literary & Cultural Studies are now available on the Center for Humanities web site: http://humanities.miami.edu/symposia/paquet.

Participants:


Michael A. Bucknor is Lecturer in the Department of Literatures in English. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) on a Commonwealth Scholarship. At Western, he won the 1997 McIntosh Award for the best Ph.D dissertation lecture and, subsequently, the 1999 USIS Postdoctoral Fellowship on “Contemporary American Literature and Culture” (University of Louisville) and the 2002 Du bois-Mandela-Rodney Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Michigan.. He has been the Chair of the Adjudication Panel for the Canada and Caribbean region of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, an editor of Journal of West Indian Literature and Postcolonial Text and is currently Chair of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS). Dr. Bucknor’s research interests include Caribbean/Canadian writing, Austin Clarke, masculinities, postcolonial literatures and theory and cultural studies. He has co-edited with Prof. Alison Donnell The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Caribbean Literature forthcoming March 2011 and is completing a manuscript entitled, “Performing Masculinities in Jamaican Popular Culture.”

Lara Cahill is a doctoral student in the Department of English at the University of Miami. Her research includes the intersections between literature and geography, environmental criticism, processes of transculturation, and Cuban zarzuela. B.A. in English and Spanish, Virginia Tech, 2000; M.A. English in English, University of Miami, 2005.

Donette Francis is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Binghamton University, where she has served as Director of Graduate Studies and the Senior Honors Program.   Her research and teaching interests include Caribbean Literary and Cultural Studies, African Diaspora Literary Studies, Globalization and Transnational Feminist Studies, and Theories of Sexuality and Citizenship.  A graduate of New York University’s American Studies Program, she has recently published Fictions of Feminine Citizenship: Sexuality and the Nation in Contemporary Caribbean Literature.  Her published articles appear in numerous journals including: Small Axe: A Journal of Caribbean Criticism, Research in African Literatures and Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir.

Rhonda D. Frederick (MA/PhD, University of Pennsylvania) teaches Caribbean, African American, and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College, where she also directs the African and African Diaspora Studies Program (AADS). Her research interests include contemporary popular fiction (speculative, horror, detective, and mystery fictions), literatures of the African Diaspora, Post-colonial Studies, Cultural Studies, and narratives of migration.  She is the author of “Colón Man a Come”: Mythographies of Panamá Canal Migration (Lexington Books, 2005) and articles published in several peer-reviewed journals and anthologies.

Glyne Griffith has a joint appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He served as Chair of the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies from 2006 to 2010. He is the author of Deconstruction, Imperialism and the West Indian Novel, and co-editor, with Linden Lewis, of Color, Hair and Bone:Race in the 21st Century. He is completing a book on the BBC “Caribbean Voices” literary radio program and the development of Anglophone Caribbean literature.

George Lamming of Barbados is a world renowned intellectual, writer, critic and educator. Lamming, chosen as the 2004 Distinguished Lecturer at the University of the West Indies, is currently Visiting Professor in the Africana Department at Brown University. He has held many prestigious academic positions including 1998-2000 scholar-in-residence at City College of the University of New York where he delivered the Langston Hughes Lecture at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City. Other recipients of the distinguished Langston Hughes Festival Award include James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou. Lamming exploded onto the literary scene in 1953 with his first novel In the Castle of My Skin which won the Somerset Maugham Award for literature, and was championed by leading writers and intellectuals such as Jean Paul Satre and Richard Wright. In the Castle of My Skin, a novel about a Caribbean childhood and the realities of colonialism remains the most widely read of West Indian novels. Lamming, author of six novels, describes himself as a "political novelist" and has been closely involved in the political and cultural events of the Caribbean and Commonwealth over the last 50 years, remaining an astute critic and commentator on political, historical and cultural events.

Paula Morgan is Senior Lecturer, Head of the Department of Liberal Arts, and Coordinator of the Cultural Studies graduate program at the University of the West Indies-St. Augustine, Trinidad.  Her primary areas of research, teaching, and publication are gender and ethnic relations in the Caribbean and the African Diaspora. Dr. Morgan has produced and/or co-authored four books, the latest being Writing Rage: Unmaskin Violence in Caribbean Discourse with Valerie Youssef.

Supriya Nair is an Associate Professor at the Department of English at Tulane University.  She is the author of Caliban’s Curse:  George Lamming and the Revisioning of History (University of Michigan Press, 1996) and co-editor of Postcolonialisms:  An Anthology of Cultural Theory and Criticism (Rutgers UP, 2005).  She is editor of the MLA Options in Teaching Series:  Teaching Anglophone Caribbean Literature (forthcoming) and has completed a manuscript on Anglophone Caribbean literature.  She has written and taught on topics related to postcolonial and feminist theory, African and Caribbean literature.

Kezia Page is Assistant Professor of English and Coordinator of Caribbean Studies at Colgate University. Her work is a socio-cultural analysis of Caribbean migrant and diaspora literature in North America and Britain. It responds to critical movements in Caribbean theory that configure the region as borderless, as a space outside of place. Ph.D. in English, University of Miami (fall 2002), M.A. in English, University of Miami (1998), B.A. in English, University of the West Indies, Mona (1996).

Sandra Pouchet Paquet (Ph.D., Connecticut, 1977) is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Miami and the major faculty advisor in Caribbean Literary Studies. She teaches in the fields of Caribbean Literature, African-American Literature, and Women's Studies. She is the author of The Novels of George Lamming (1982), Caribbean Autobiography (2002), and co-editor of Music, Memory, Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination (2007). She has published numerous book and journal articles in Caribbean and African-American Literature, was guest editor of special issues of Callaloo ( "Eric Williams and the Postcolonial Caribbean" 1997), andJournal of West Indian Literature (Volume 8, Number 1: October 1998 and Volume 8, Number 2: April 1999). She was Director of the pioneering Caribbean Writers' Summer Institute at the University of Miami (1992-1996).

Patricia Saunders is an assistant professor of English at the University of Miami. Her research and scholarship focus largely on the relationship between sexual identity and national identity in Caribbean literature and popular culture. Her work has appeared in The Bucknell Review,CalabashPlantation Society in the Americas and Small Axe. She is currently completing a manuscript titled Re-Patri-nation: Caribbean Literature and the Task of Translating Identity. Her manuscript traces the emergence of literary nationalism in the Anglophone Caribbean and maps its transformations through discourses of exile, national and sexual identity, and Diaspora race politics in three cultural and political contexts: pre-independence Trinidad, post-independence Britain and the Civil rights era in the United States. Other works in progress include an edited collection of essays on Jamaican popular culture.

Stephen Stuempfle is Executive Director of the Society for Ethnomusicology and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. Steve received a Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania and has conducted field research in Trinidad, Texas and Florida. Over the past two decades, he has assisted a variety of arts and historical organizations and has taught courses on folk and popular culture at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Miami. From 2000-2008 he was Chief Curator of the Historical Museum of South Florida in Miami with responsibilities in the direction of research projects; archival and object collections; and exhibition programs related to the history and cultural traditions of South Florida and the Caribbean He is the author of The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), and has written about Caribbean music for several journals and encyclopedias. He is also co-editor, with Sandra Pouchet Paquet and Patricia J. Saunders, of Music, Memory, Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination (Ian Randle Publishers, 2007).

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March 29, 2011

The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature: Shortlist

From left: Edwidge Danticat, Derek Walcott, and Tiphanie Yanique

A Nobel laureate, a MacArthur “genius” fellow, and a first-time author are finalists for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media.

On 28 March, 2011, the Prize judges announced the winners of the three genre categories, who are now finalists for the overall Prize, which comes with an award of US$10,000.

Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, who was previously given a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” in 2009, is the non-fiction category winner for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize, for her essay collection Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. The judges describe the book as “thoughtful, interesting, and varied in its insights, often moving, and beautifully written, in a passionate yet restrained style.”

St. Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott is the poetry category winner, for his book White Egrets, which has already won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize. The OCM Bocas Prize judges call it “a superb collection . . . that speaks for all of us who live and love and can’t ever take our eyes off the wonder of the world around us.”

The fiction category winner is How to Escape a Leper Colony, the debut short fiction collection by Tiphanie Yanique of the US Virgin Islands. “Extremely touching but never sentimental,” say the judges, “this is a wonderfully engaging gathering of stories by a genuinely gifted writer.”

The overall winner of the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize will be announced on 30 April, during the first annual Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain (28 April to 1 May). The festival schedule includes readings from all three shortlisted books, and Tiphanie Yanique will participate in the programme.

For more, please follow this link; http://www.bocaslitfest.com/ocm-bocas-prize.html




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March 28, 2011

In My Own Words...Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming


WRITING CONNECTIONS: CARIBBEAN-STYLE

In 1994, Dr. Sandra Pouchet Paquet, Director of the Caribbean Writers’ Summer Institute (CWSI), offered, and I accepted an Institute scholarship to attend the CWSI Fiction Workshop, directed by noted Caribbean poet and writer, Olive Senior, at the University of Miami. Then in 1995, Dr. Pouchet Paquet offered, and I accepted an Institute scholarship to attend the CWSI Poetry Workshop, directed by another noted Caribbean poet and writer, Lorna Goodison. Both of these workshops were the very first writing workshops I had ever attended and the experience was overwhelming.

 I learned much from Olive Senior and Lorna Goodison, as well as the other workshop participants. Seminars for scholars of Caribbean literature were held simultaneously with the writing workshops. The scholars and writers were all able to participate in discussions and readings that enhanced the workshop experience and exposed the writers to literary criticism. The writers and scholars also benefited from the discussions, seminars and readings presented by the specially invited guest Caribbean writers such as George Lamming, David Dabydeen and Maryse Conde, to name just a few. Each workshop lasted five weeks, but at the end, we had made new friends, and many of us are still friends today.

The CWSI Fiction and Poetry workshops proved to be the foundation for my writing career. I was able to polish my first poetry manuscript, which included poems written in the CWSI Poetry Workshop, based on feedback from Lorna Goodison. That manuscript was to become my first poetry collection and first book, Curry Flavour, which was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2000. I was introduced to Jeremy Poynting and Hannah Bannister of Peepal Tree Press by Deborah Nester, a PhD student at the University of Miami, who attended the CWSI as a Literature scholar and who was also on the staff of the Institute.  Curry Flavour was reviewed by the Caribbean writer and blogger, Geoffrey Philp, who was himself a participant in the CWSI workshops.   

As for my fiction, after participating in the CWSI Fiction Workshop with Olive Senior, I was able to get my short stories published in journals and magazine, in particular The Caribbean Writer, published by the University of the Virgin Islands, St Croix, USVI. Subsequently, in the summer of 2000, I was awarded a scholarship to attend the inaugural Cropper Foundation Fiction Workshop, which was led by Merle Hodge and Funso Aiyejina (himself a participant in the CWSI workshops). The next year, 2001, I entered the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association Short Story Competition with the story ‘Saving Rupa’, which won the Overall or Grand Prize. I continued submitting my short stories for publication, one of which won the Canute Brodhurst Prize from The Caribbean Writer in 2009.

Some other publications in which my poetry and stories have appeared since attending the workshops include:  Poui: The Cave Hill Literary Annual - University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Barbados; Woman Speak - Bahamian literary journal featuring women’s voices; Anthurium - A Caribbean Studies electronic journal, Editor Dr. Sandra Pouchet Paquet, published by the University of Miami; Voice, Memory, Ashes: Lest We Forget - An anthology published by Mango Publishing, UK; In Our Own Words – A Generation Defining Itself – literary journal edited by Marlow Peerse Weaver, published by MW Enterprises, NC, USA; Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review Special Caribbean Issue (2004) - University of Virginia; Yinna - Journal of the Bahamas Association of Cultural Studies (BACUS); Journal of Caribbean Literatures - University of Central Arkansas literary journal; Thamyris – literary journal published by Najade Press, Amsterdam, and Caribbean Erotic, edited by Opal Palmer Adisa and Donna Weir-Soley (two participants of the CWSI) and published by Peepal Tree Press in 2010.

As a result of my writing, I was a featured writer at the Miami Book Fair International (1996 and 2000) which was organized by Mervyn Solomon, who was on the staff of the CWSI. I was also a featured writer at the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture, Duke University, 2002, organised by my friend and noted Caribbean poet and scholar, Dr. Christian Campbell. Along with Olive Senior, I was one of the featured writers at the University of The Virgin Islands, St Croix Campus Humanities Week, 2004 which was organized by a graduate of the University of Miami, and former student of Dr. Sandra Pouchet Paquet, Dr. Kim Dismont Robinson. In 2007, spearheaded by Dr. Sandra Pouchet Paquet, the University of Miami hosted a Caribbean Literary Studies Conference under the theme “The Asian Experience in The Caribbean and The Guyanas: Labour and Migration, Literature and Culture”, for which I was one of the guest poets. I was also the keynote speaker at the Caribbean without Borders Conference 2008, at the University of Puerto Rico, organized by Caribbean scholar, Dr. Dorsia Smith.

In 2009, I submitted my second poetry manuscript, ‘Immortelle and Bhandaaraa Poems’ to the Inaugural International Proverse Prize for unpublished writing. Based on incisive critiques by Lorna Goodison, I edited the manuscript, and Dr. Sandra Pouchet Paquet wrote the preface to ‘Immortelle and Bhandaaraa Poems’. The manuscript was shortlisted for the prize and was subsequently published by Proverse Hong Kong in 2011.

Lamenting the lack of writing workshops available to Caribbean writers, two Bahamian writers, Helen Klonaris and Marion Bethel, both of whom participated in the CWSI workshops, created the Bahamian Writers’ Summer Institute in 2009 offering fiction, poetry, memoir, playwriting and screenwriting workshops. I had the great opportunity to teach the BWSI Fiction Workshop in 2010, where Olive Senior was the guest writer. I am slated to teach the Bahamas Writers’ Summer Institute Fiction Workshop again in 2011. The CWSI spawned many new Caribbean writers and now they are continuing its legacy in many diverse and interconnected ways.


About Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming:

Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming resides in Nassau, The Bahamas where she is a practicing Mechanical/Building Services Engineer. Her academic qualifications include a B.Sc. Degree in Mechanical Engineering (Hons.) from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad; and a M.Sc. Degree in Building Services Engineering from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland. She is a Chartered Engineer registered with the Engineering Council in the UK and a Professional Engineer registered with The Professional Engineers Board of The Bahamas.

Lelawattee is also a poet, fiction writer and essayist, whose poetry, stories and artwork have appeared in numerous publications in The Bahamas, the Caribbean, Nicaragua, USA and Europe. She has won poetry, essay and art awards in The Bahamas. Internationally, she has won the David Hough Literary Prize from The Caribbean Writer (2001); the Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for Short Fiction from The Caribbean Writer (2009); and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) 2001 Short Story Competition. She was short-listed for the inaugural Proverse Literary Prize (2009). Her first book of poetry, Curry Flavour, was published in 2000 by Peepal Tree Press, Leeds, England. Proverse Hong Kong published her second book of poetry, Immortelle and Bhandaaraa Poems, which includes some of her artwork, in 2011.




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March 25, 2011

The Countdown is On!


 5 days/50 films

 Mar. 30-Apr. 3, 2011


Film, Fashion, Fabulous! Shaping the Images of Women Globally

Welcome to the official site of the 6th Annual Women’s International Film & Arts Festival-South Florida from March 30 – April 3, 2011.

Join us as we discover Women’s Dreams, Visions & Voices with five days of films, art, fashion shows, workshops, parties and much more.

Our 2011 festival is sure to be spectacular! Watch wonderful films from around the world. Meet and greet the directors, actors, distributors, designers, stylists and other industry leaders. And don’t miss our 2011 special programs including our 3rd annual Film Pool Pajama Party as well as our celebration of an often neglected part of the industry – Fashion.

Since wardrobe design was historically the vehicle for women to enter the film industry, WIFF will be playing homage to the many women who have shaped the images of how women look in the movies, on the red carpet and everyday in our homes, businesses and nightlife.

And don’t forget The 2011 WIFF Family Fun Fest. It’s a special treat for parents who’d like to spend a fun-filled day out with the kids – films, bounce houses and lots of entertainment will be on hand for the entire family. Don’t miss it.

Then, as the afternoon grows into evening, we’ll present a special WIFF Celebration of Women musical concert planned for us all to sing, dance and celebrate life. So mark your calendars and keep visiting this website as more information becomes available!


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Poetry Friday: "For us, the spirit is always calling"


For us, the spirit is always calling:
“Lift up your eyes to higher ground
bathe in the light that is found
at the first break of morning
before the clash of sound.”

For us, the spirit is always calling:
“Forget yesterday’s sorrow clawing
at your back, the bliss it has drowned,
burying your joy under a dusty mound.
For us, the spirit is always calling.

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March 24, 2011

Author Event: Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Fest...Image via Wikipedia


Elizabeth Nunez, author of Bruised Hibiscus, will be at Nova University this Sunday (3/27/2011) for Lit Live: http://www.bplfoundation.org/literaryfeast.htm. She will be reading from her latest novel, Anna In-Between.


About Elizabeth Nunez

Elizabeth Nunez is a United States novelist, and distinguished professor of English at Medgar Evers College–CUNY, in Brooklyn, New York. Nunez is also cofounder of the National Black Writers Conference. She emigrated to the United States from Trinidad, and received her Ph.D. from New York University.

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March 23, 2011

The 2011 Bocas Lit Fest Program


The 2011 Bocas Lit Fest program features over fifty events spread over four days, from April 28 to May 1, 2011. The Bocas Lit Fest: the Trinidad and Tobago Literary Festival is an annual celebration of books, writing, and writers.  The main venue for the events will be the National Library of Trinidad and Tobago (shown above).
The Bocas Lit fest site explains: “Boca is the Spanish word for mouth—the organ of speech and song and storytelling. And the Bocas del Dragón—the Dragon’s Mouths— are the narrow straits off Trinidad’s northwest peninsula, which connect the sheltered Gulf of Paria to the open Caribbean Sea. For centuries, the Bocas were the gateways connecting Trinidad to the Caribbean and the Atlantic. The Bocas Lit Fest invites readers from around the world to enter through the Dragon’s Mouths and celebrate with us the rich literary heritage of Trinidad and Tobago and the wider Caribbean.”

Via Repeating Islands

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Proud Camden: Bob Marley & the Golden Age of Reggae


© Kim Gottlieb-Walker, Lenswoman.com

PROUD CAMDEN PRESENTS

Bob Marley & the Golden Age of Reggae

Running: 7th April – 15th May 2011

Launch:  6th April 2011
11am to 5.30pm Mon – Sun
The Horse Hospital
Stables Market
Chalk Farm Road
London
NW1 8AH
Website:  www.proud.co.uk

Admission is free

Proud Camden presents Bob Marley & the Golden Age of Reggae, an exhibition of photographs by celebrated photographer Kim Gottlieb-Walker. This exhibition is a stunning visual record of the “golden age of reggae” to mark the 30th anniversary of Bob Marley’s death this May. 
© Kim Gottlieb-Walker 

During 1975 and 1976, renowned underground photo-journalist Kim Gottlieb-Walker and her husband, Head of Publicity at Island Records Jeff Walker, documented what is now widely recognised as the Golden Age of reggae. Over two years of historic trips to Jamaica and exclusive meetings in Los Angeles, Kim took iconic photographs of the artists who would go on to define an era and captivate a generation. 

Proud Galleries has worked with Kim Gottlieb-Walker to create an exhibition of candid and intimate photographs of the artists and producers who brought the reggae sound to the international stage, including Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Toots Hibbert, Burning Spear, Lee “Scratch” Perry and, of course, Bob Marley. This exhibition includes never-before-seen photographs and is a stunning photographic record of one of the most exciting moments in recent musical history, with a warmth and intimacy born out of the respect between Kim Gottlieb-Walker and the artist. 


Proud Galleries

Proud Galleries was launched in Autumn 1998. Its ethos? To bring the very best in high quality photography to the mainstream market. Proud instantly took the photography world by storm and quickly grew into Europe’s most popular private photography gallery.
Today the Proud brand runs on of the most visited destinations in London. Two galleries, a live music venue, and a Cabaret club have cemented its success and in a harsh economic climate, Proud continues to expand.

Never failing to exhibit the work of the world’s best photographers, Proud has hosted shows by everyone from Terry O’Neill to Jerry Schatzberg, Gered Mankowitz to Ken Russell. With star-studded launch parties and some of the best press coverage in the country, the unique Proud formula has situated the company at the very top of its game.

Kim Gottlieb-Walker

Kim Gottlieb-Walker's incredibly varied career has covered everything from classic rock and roll, reggae, and politics in the 60‟s and 70‟s to working on major motion pictures and television shows. 

While still at UCLA (where she received a BA in Motion Picture production) and shortly thereafter, she shot for the underground Los Angeles press including magazines like Crawdaddy and Music World and shot her classic portraits of Jimi Hendrix when she was only 20. Her High Times cover of Bob Marley remains their most popular cover, ever. In the mid-seventies, she freelanced extensively for Island Records documenting the reggae performers all over Jamaica. She also shot the stills for John Carpenter’s “Halloween,” “The Fog,” “Christine” and Escape from New York” and worked at Paramount for nine years as the production photographer for “Cheers” and five years for “Family Ties.” She has served for over two decades as an elected representatives for still photographers on the National Executive Board of IATSE Local 600, the International Cinematographers Guild. Titan Press has recently published her first photo book Bob Marley and the Golden Age of Reggae.

FOR FURTHER EXHIBITION INFORMATION, SERIAL RIGHTS / USE OF PICTURES / INTERVIEW OPPORTUNITIES CONTACT:

Lucy Simon at Proud Galleries:  +44(0) 20 7839 4942 | lucy@proudgalleries.co.uk | www.proud.co.uk  

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