Carib Lit Plus (Early to Mid December 2020)

A reminder that the process with these Carib Lit Plus Caribbean arts bulletins is to do a front and back half of the month, updating as time allows as new information comes in; so, come back, or, if looking for an earlier installment, use the search window. (in brackets, as much as I can remember, I’ll add a note re how I sourced the information)

Books on Film

Let’s talk about Antiguan and Barbudan filmmaker Shabier Kirchner who is about to make his feature film directorial debut with the adaptation of Jamaican writer Kei Miller’s acclaimed Augustown. As I mentioned in my CREATIVE SPACE series, the cinematographer who made his directorial debut with the self-produced short Dadli (which I talk about and link in another CREATIVE SPACE) has allied with Oscar winning director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Widows, Shame etc.) who will be executive producing the film. The two previously collaborated (as director of photographer on all five chapters) on Mc Queen’s Small Axe anthology series (which I still haven’t had the opportunity to see so I hope this vid doesn’t have too many spoilers but I won’t deny you an opportunity to hear from the creators including Wadadli’s own Shabier Kirchner who opens his intro with “Live all the way from Antigua!”). Love it!

Remember you can find interviews with Shabier and reviews of his work here on the blog.

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Late Caribbean-British writer Andrea Levy’s novel The Long Song has been adapted for the visual medium. It premieres on PBS on January 31st 2021. Here’s a teaser trailer.

The Long Song – published in 2010 – followed on the success of her phenomenal Small Island – publishe din 2004 – which was made in to a BBC mini-series in 2018. Levy died in 2019. (Source – stumbled upon it on YouTube)

Book of the Year

ETA: See Kudos (below) for the short listed nominees. What’s your choice for book of the year? Rebel Women Lit, a book club out of Jamaica, initially, wants to know. This is your opportunity to be a taste maker (why let the awards and critics have all the fun?). As we said when we did the Antigua and Barbuda Readers Choice Award for the first time, it’s an opportunity to share the love – boost a book and author that you like. Rebel Women Lit’s Readers’ Choice Award, meanwhile, is Caribbean-wide. First there’s the nomination process, then the voting process, and then in later January will come the celebration of the winners. The categories are 2020’s Best Caribbean Novel (Adult, Teen & Tween), Poetry, and Non-Fiction book. They’re also celebrating favourite Caribbean Literary Critic of 2020 and Best New Content Creator (including Booktubers and Bookstagrammers). I’m excited about this; are you? Nominate by December 10th; vote between December 13th and 31st. Winners will be announced January 3rd 2020. Read the full Rebel Women Lit newsletter here. (Source – Rebel Women Lit newsletter)

Event

December 14th 2020 will be #CATAPULTDay, a day when all the efforts of the past months by artists across the Caribbean, those fortunate enough to be recipients of grants via this programme, will be in the spotlight. The organizers (American Friends of Jamaica, Kingston Creative, and Fresh Milk Barbados) have been promoting the various outputs of the grant recipients – especially the salon activities – for several weeks going back to September-ish. But on December 14th 2020, it climaxes with a special series of posts. As a grantee, I’m looking forward to it. Use the #CATAPULTday and #Catapultartsgrant (alternatively or additionally search #caribbeanculturematters #artsmatters #artsspacecaribbean #artecaribeňo #culturematters #creativecommunity) across social media, so you won’t miss a thing. CATAPULT is @catapultartscarib on Instagram and that’s probably a good point of nexus. #CATAPULTday starts at 8am EST (9am AST) and ends at 5pm EST (6pm AST). It cannot be overstated how important this initiative is. Under this initiative, artists across various disciplines and across the English, Dutch, French, and Spanish speaking Caribbean have had the opportunity to create (via the Stay at Home Residency), connect (via the Lockdown Virtual Salon and Digital Creative Training), and communicate their work (via the Caribbean Artist Showcase, Consultancy Vouchers, and Caribbean Creative Online grants), backed by that vital component – money. More of this, please.

I certainly appreciated it.

There is clearly a hunger for it, 2020 or not, as applications came from all over the Caribbean – only 1% of applicants and awardees from Antigua and Barbuda*, so we could do a lot better. But I’m thrilled to be joined by another Antiguan and Barbudan grant recipient, whose vid I just checked out. She is Aisha Joseph, a protegee of both Veron Henry and his father the late Eustace Manning Henry of Hell’s Gate, who is pursuing a bachelor of arts in steel pan fabrication and its art form in the US. “I find pan building to be very therapeutic,” she said in her facebook live. “I love that I’m creating something that so many people have come to love and gravitate towards.” It was such a relaxed and personal walk through the process of pan building, and interesting as that was, my favourite bit (this is a literary site after all) was the self-penned poem she shared. ‘Me ah de Pan’, it is called, and to excerpt the poem’s personification of the pan making process, “it reminds me of pregnancy, except instead of giving birth to a baby, you get me; a sweet melodic and harmonic symphony.” Nice. ETA: I am informed of a third Antiguan and Barbudan awardee (so I’m double checking the numbers received, posted below). She is Raena Bird whose bio asserts a passion for visual arts and her social media indicates that a November 2020 JINK, PAINT & NYAM event (which seems to be part of a series of private paid art events under the banner Wardartli) was made possible by the grant.

*Breakdown of applicants and awardees by Country (per Catapult) – Anguilla (3 applicants – 1%); Antigua and Barbuda (4 applicants – 1%; 2 awardees – 1%); Aruba (6 applicants – 1%; 3 awardees – 1%); Barbados (37 applicants – 9%; 19 awardees – 8%); Belize (4 applicants – 1%; 1 awardee – 0%); Bermuda (4 applicants – 1%; 2 awardees – 1%); Cayman Islands (1 applicant – 0.25%; 2 awardees – 1%); Curacao (2 applicants – 0.49%; 1 applicant – 0%); Dominica (6 applicants – 1%; 3 awardees – 1%); Dominican Republic (14 applicants – 3%; 9 awardees – 4%); Grenada (5 applicants – 1%; 3 awardees – 1%); Guadeloupe (8 applicants – 2%; 5 awardees – 2%); Guyana (11 applicants – 3%; 3 awardees – 1%); Haiti (21 applicants – 5%; 8 awardees – 3%); Jamaica (153 applicants – 38%; 97 awardees – 41%); Martinique (5 applicants – 1%; 2 applicants – 1%); Puerto Rico (19 applicants – 5%; 13 awardees – 6%); Saba (1 applicant – 0.25%; 2 awardees – 1%); Sint Maarten (4 applicants – 1%; 4 applicants – 2%); St. Kitts and Nevis (3 applicants – 1%; 2 awardees – 1%); St. Lucia (1 applicant – 0.25%; 1 awardee – 0.42%); St. Vincent and the Grenadines (2 applicants – 0.49%; 2 awardees – 1%); Suriname (4 applicants – 1%; 1 awardee – 0.42%); The Bahamas (18 applicants – 4%; 8 awardees – 3%); Trinidad and Tobago (66 applicants – 16%; 40 awardees – 17%); US Virgin Islands (3 applicants – 1%; 3 awardees – 1%).

(Source – My involvement as a grant award recipient; the curiousity that led me to ask certain questions and do additional research)

Kudos

Several Antiguans and Barbudans and Wadadli Pen fam made the short list of the Rebel Women Lit Book Club Caribbean (Readers Choice) book awards. Check them out here; then go vote. (Source – YouTube live announcement via Rebel Women)

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Big up to Bocas, the Trinidad and Tobago education administrators, and writer Lisa Allen-Agostini who deserve kudos for this initiative – the kind of initiative we need to see replicated across the Caribbean. It’s the Write Away! Young Adult Literature Project funded by the Scotiabank Foundation. “The Write Away! Young Adult Literature project is giving all schools access to five virtual creative writing workshops via the Ministry of Education’s School Learning Management System. Led by the award-winning author Lisa Allen-Agostini, the workshops break down the essentials of creative writing….it is designed to keep students and teachers motivated and engaged in online learning this term. It also gives students access to exciting, culturally-relevant books of all genres that can foster a lifelong love of reading. …In addition to the virtual package that all schools can access, nine secondary schools in the Write Away! project receive books for their school libraries to facilitate book clubs and reading groups, and guided writing support for their students from the Bocas Lit Fest and workshop facilitator Lisa Allen-Agostini. The best writing from students in the Write Away! project will be published next year in an e-book, launching the next generation of writers-to-watch from Trinidad and Tobago.” Details here. (Source – I may have seen it first on Lisa’s blog or a Bocas email)

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The Caribbean Writer Volume 34 prize winners are Carmelo Rivera of Vieques and St. Croix (the Daily News Prize for an essay or fiction from the BVI or USVI), for ‘About My Identity Journey’; BVI-lander resident in Grenada Eugenia O’Neal (the Canute A. Broadhurst Prize for short fiction), for ‘Harold Varlack’s Return’; Jamaican Natalie G.S. Corthésy (the Marvin E. Williams Literary Prize), for ‘The Helper Experiment’; Rajiv Ramkhalawan of Trinidad (the Cecile de Jongh Literary Prize for a Caribbean wrier whose work best expresses the spirit of the Caribbean), for ‘An Unkept Heart’; and Rohan Facey (the Vincent Cooper Literary Prize for exemplary writing in Caribbean nation language), for ‘Fi We Language’. (Source – email from The Caribbean Writer)

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Mary Quinn, the grand dame of poetry in Antigua and Barbuda, was honoured posthumously (she passed in 2019) on December 3rd 2020 by the governor general of Antigua and Barbuda for “faithful and meritorious service in education and the literary arts”. Her eldest (Paul Quinn) and youngest (Lydia Quinn) children accepted the award. (Source – Lydia Quinn’s facebook page)

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Lorna Goodison has completed her tenure as Poet Laureate of Jamaica, earning praise from the Culture director as she exits. “Throughout her tenure she has elevated brand Jamaica globally and right here at home. The focus work of Lorna in the field of education and culture at varying levels through the deep examination and careful production of Jamaican poetry helped propel Jamaica forward and we are extremely proud of you,” the Minister said. Goodison’s final production is New Voices: Selected by Lorna Goodison, Poet Laureate of Jamaica, 2017-2020. Read more at Jamaica Observer online. (Source – N/A)

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Caribbean writer Nalo Hopkinson has been named the 37th Damon Knight Grand Master of and by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America for her contributions to the genre. The award recognizes lifetime achievement in science fiction and fantasy. It will be presented at the 56th Annual Nebula Conference and Awards ceremony, to be streamed between June 4th and 6th 2021. Nalo continues to make inroads in the genre not known for its diversity since the publication of her first novel, the award winning Brown Girl in the Ring, in 1998. “Naming Nalo as Grand Master recognizes not only her phenomenal writing but also her work as an educator who has shaped so many of the rising stars of modern SFF,” said SFFWA president (author of her own engaging fantasy series) American writer Mary Robinette Kowal. Kowal said that Nalo’s nomination got “unanimous approval”.

“She will be only the eighth woman, the second person of colour, and the first Caribbean writer to be named a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master, and she is amazing.” – MRK

Some of you may remember that Nalo was a guest of the Caribbean International Literary Festival (later rebranded as the Antigua and Barbuda International Literary Festival before fizzling out altogether) in Antigua and Barbuda in 2006. That’s her third from right alongside other guest and local writers (from left Althea Prince, Elizabeth Nunez, Verna Wilkins, and on the other side of Nalo, Marie Elena John and me – Joanne C. Hillhouse). Nalo was born in Jamaica to Guyanese writer Slade Hopkinson, and grew up in Trinidad, Guyana, and Canada where she’s spent the bulk of her life; she currently lives in the US where she works as a professor when not writing. (Source – Twitter originally then I scouted for more information)

As with all content on Wadadli Pen, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Musical Youth, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure/Perdida! Una Aventura en el Mar Caribe, and Oh Gad!). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out my page on WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. You can also subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.

Arts and Antiguan-Barbudan Independence: a Discussion

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October through to November 1st (Independence Day) is Independence season in Antigua and Barbuda. Of course, if you’re Antiguan and Barbudan, you already know this; and if you’re a blog subscriber, you’ve already seen the 2017 Independence programme.

This post is about some back and forth that first erupted on social media and then made its way on to traditional media concerning the Harriet Tubman activities – three of them on the programme. The gist of the criticism was that Independence should spotlight Antiguan and Barbudan history and that while Harriet Tubman – a hero who shepherded many blacks to freedom in America – was not without relevance to a majority black country with its own history of enslavement and rebellion, the workshops and theatrical production (reportedly proposed by the Leonard Tim Hector Memorial Committee) would have been a better fit for Black History Month while Independence focused on our own icons. I do think the media should have sought (or maybe they did and it wasn’t reported, or it was reported and I missed it) the perspective of the group that proposed it. But the only official explanation came from the Culture Minister, Chet Greene, who was quoted in the Daily Observer media as saying, among other things, “There are no plays that are written on the lives and works of Nellie Robinson, George Walters and Prince Klaas King Court…The offer that was made to us was on a play, which has value to a Black Civilization; value at a time of rebuilding and uniting, and value in exposing our young people in terms of who we are in time and space…I would want to throw an invitation out to some playwriter, or poet in our space, perhaps, for next year or as part of work beginning now, to seek to provide short plays or skits on the lives and works of Antiguans and Barbudans.” The Minister in particular rebuked Senator Aziza Lake, herself an artist, activist, and media producer, for a facebook comment in which she was quoted, in the same article, as saying, “Tubman is an African American hero who risked her life to free slaves, but she has no place in the country’s Independence celebrations with three separate events.” His quoted comment: “Harriet Tubman’s name is an important name in the history of Black people. And to make an issue of having her name surfacing at Independence time, at Carnival time, or at any time of year in Antigua and Barbuda, by someone who is supposed to be a leader of the nation, it really is disconcerting…When I see comments like that coming from persons like the good Senator Aziza Lake, it makes me wonder if people are aware of their own history. I find that she is just using the opportunity to make mischief.” The article also quoted Carol Hector-Harris, an African American journalist, as saying, “I really appreciate the fact that Harriet Tubman is going to be included in this year’s Independence celebration. In the States, we look to our Caribbean brothers and sisters to celebrate a variety of things in our history…And every achievement that is made by our Caribbean brothers and sisters, we consider them to be our achievement too. And the achievements that we make are your achievements too. We are the same people. We just got off the ‘ship’ at a different port.”

In a follow up article in the same paper, creative artist Alister Thomas pushed back. He was quoted as saying, “There should have already been commissioned individuals who could write the history of this country. There should have been various publications as far as the personalities who would have made contributions from slavery, colonialism, post- colonialism to independence. That would have been helpful…I don’t think we should be, in 2017, saying that we do not have drama featuring local personalities who would have made invaluable contribution to our development, our growth and where we have progressed from slavery…These things should have been an integral part of the education system from first form and even from pre-school. We need introspection. Those things should have already been in motion.” He did not seem, as reported, to object to the inclusion of Harriet Tubman, remarking that “It (Independence) is traditionally the time of year when the nation and its people seek to celebrate its accomplishment from post-colonialism to present. But if a decision is being made to feature a Black personality, who would have made an invaluable contribution in writing our history, I could not be critical of it in any sort of way…I would have preferred [however] that personalities here…, because there are Antiguan and Barbudan descendants of slaves here who are not featured who should be featured, not just at Independence time.”

I then received a call from Big Issues, a Sunday news-discussion programme on the paper’s sister station Observer radio. That panel, hosted by Kieron Murdoch, also included playwright and novelist Dorbrene O’Marde

Dorbrene, also a calypso writer, publisher of Calypso Talk magazine, and biographer of calypso legend King Short Shirt, seen here presenting at a 2007 Calypso Association conference.

 

visual artist and former Culture Director Heather Doram

Heather Doram, 2005, as Culture Director at the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize awards.

writer and book store owner Barbara Arrindell

Barbara Arrindell, pictured here at the 2012 Wadadli Pen awards ceremony is a Wadadli Pen partner, former coordinator of the Independence Literary Arts Competition, playwright who has written and produced a play on national hero King Court/Prince Klaas, and the author of The Legend of Bat’s Cave and Oher Stories and Antigua My Antigua.

and me

I didn’t want to be a part of any bashing of Harriet Tubman or of the group which reportedly proposed the project, nor of discrediting our intersection as black Caribbean people with African-Americans, but I did have opinions on the role that arts could play in our society and in our Independence (I have been very vocal on this site on the ways in which arts could be better served and used in service in Antigua and Barbuda). The latter was largely the focus of the conversation. Here are some excerpts (I would have liked to share the audio clip of the entire programme or transcribed all of it but this is the best I could do in the time I had and within fair use boundaries):

Heather Doram–
“I’m a firm believer that we need to be pushing more of our own, we need to establish who we are as Antiguans and Barbudans, we need to support…all of the artists a little bit more…and those persons should be supported to produce (pieces on local culture)… I don’t think we have touched the tip of the iceberg yet when it comes to us digging in to our culture, our history.”

Barbara Arrindell–
“Let’s take one of our national heroes Prince Klaas, I know of three plays that have been written in the last 20 years about him…but in general these pieces that we’re looking for should be encouraged and commissioned by the government and the best opportunity to do that would be independence, when better…we need to be celebrating these people so that our young people understand who we as a people are, that we are not Americans, we are not, we are Antiguans and Barbudans, (and) we have a proud history and heritage.”

Joanne C. Hillhouse–
“I do feel that Independence should be specific to our journey as Antiguans and Barbudans. But I don’t want us to take that to mean that we’re not a part of the broader global community, broader African diasporic community. For me, Harriet Tubman is somebody who I respect and admire, I think she’s iconic. I do take issue with that being the central theatrical production of our Independence when we have, as Barbara just said, several plays that have been written, no commissions that have gone out for these artistes to produce these plays, because art is expensive, and this is the thing that is missing from the minister’s comments, this understanding that artists toil day and night in Antigua and that the greatest gift you can give an artist is time. Time to write, time costs money because artists have bills just like everybody else…putting on productions costs money and a lot of the time the artists are doing what they can but then they need someone else to help them get, whether it’s grant funding, whether it’s state commissions, whatever, to help them push things across the line, but artists are creating in Antigua every day. I remember a few years ago attending a street theatre production put on by the Antigua Dance Academy…it was a production centred on the story of Prince Klaas…it was our story…I don’t know that a production like that couldn’t have a place in our Independence.”

Dorbrene O’Marde–
“Just to go back a bit, the whole idea that nothing exists, the 1972 Antigua Carifesta production was a play called the Legend of Prince Klaas that was written by Oliver Flax…we have Rick James …who years and years ago… staged a one act piece about Olaudah Equiano, and I think he enlarged that subsequently and did a large production in the King George grounds… (Montserratian) David Edgecombe just within the last three or four years wrote and produced a piece called The Lady of Parham about the human tragedy surrounding the legend of the ghost of Parham; so material exists, and even though material doesn’t exist in …theatrical form…we’ve had a large number of writers in this country who have written biographies…or have put together a whole set of stories…there’s a lot of material that if the festivals commission or the whole ministry of culture etc. was interested, and let’s assume that they are, in really getting these things on stage…there’s space for leadership here, there’s space for commissioning such works, there’s an opportunity, a golden opportunity to support the writers in this country…we need to give that credit to understand the process of writing and to understand the challenges that we as writers face in this country…there is material there, converting the material to stage is, of course, the challenge and that is what needs the support of the commission..”

Heather Doram–
“My feeling is that I have lived under several administrations and I really do not get the feeling that there is that widespread support for the visual and performing arts…you just use them when you need them…we do not even have a national gallery in Antigua and Barbuda so we the artists are there producing work in sort of isolation. I’ve seen it in many other countries where the national gallery would commission work; this sort of spurs the whole generation and activity of work and then the artists start to feel that sense of involvement and that their art work can actually support them…the same thing I’m sure applies to the literary artist…something like the cultural development division should be that nexus of that sort of leadership, this is where the cradle is…I would really like to see more support for the arts generally.”

Barbara Arrindell–
“It has survived so far without the support of government… or with very little support…but it’s surviving, not thriving…you have people like the Reverend John Andrew Buckley…the first black Moravian minister anywhere in the world, and he came from Antigua…you have Elizabeth and Ann Hart…free coloured women who helped first established the first system of education for enslaved people…in the hemisphere…the building at Bethesda…these sisters got people who had to toil all day to come out at night and early morning to put up this structure so that their children could have an opportunity for education, how could we not celebrate them. …let’s say she’s the subject of our next independence…we’re talking about building up our knowledge base, our understanding of who we are.”

Joanne C. Hillhouse–
“What’s missing a lot of the times… is continuity…and that will continue to be missing if there’s no master plan; and development, you can invest in a major prize or you can invest in the development of the arts…literary arts development is not an annual competition, it is day to day programmes in the schools, in the communities which foster creative thinking, which foster the imagination, which then bleeds in to other things…if we had ongoing programmes utilizing the artists in the community…then we could say we’re actually having continuity, that we’re having investment in the development of the arts. I know, because I have and I’m sure others have to, have made proposals and have seen those proposals fizzle or stagnate and go nowhere…not only have the artists been doing, but the artists have been proactive about proposing things and those things have gone nowhere. So I do think  that we could be doing a lot more in terms of not just the big show pieces but in terms of actual investment in the development of the arts, in utilizing the talent that we had here on a continuous basis.”

Dorbrene O’Marde–
“We’re definitely not doing enough…you talk to groups today and mention Tim Hector…in schools, the name is not know; what he does has not been heralded…my interactions with young people…points to this particular void…history clearly is the subject of interest here, that we know who we are…the decisions about where we’re going will be made on the basis of that knowledge…if you understand the history of how we came to own these lands…then we wouldn’t behave the way we’re behaving, for example, with our land…”

Heather Doram–
“I think a government has a responsibility number one, to help develop these skills in the population…I don’t think in our developing of our young people we can just focus on the academic…and wouldn’t that (art) really enrich the lives of our people…I don’t think we’re developing these well rounded individuals…we need a balance.”

Joanne C. Hillhouse–
“When Heather was culture director…I remember her starting a national collection where she commissioned pieces featuring Antiguan and Barbudan icons…what has become of that? What has been the continuity with respect to that national collection?… things like that, like you can have someone with a good idea start something

This painting of Short Shirt by Artist, part of the ‘national collection’ was included in this Carnival 50 anniversary anthology, which I edited for the Daily Observer.

…things happened before but there was no continuity, so if there’s no continuity it’s like you’re starting from scratch every time someone gets fired up and passionate about something so that’s the whole point…if you have that continuity then this person’s efforts will connect with that person’s efforts and we’ll have progression instead of starting from scratch every time…one of the things I do on the Wadadli Pen website is I have a project where I record the books that are put out and the plays and the songs that are put out by Antiguan and Barbudan creatives and there’s no shortage of stuff in the last 10 or so years, there’s a lot of people just feeling inspired and doing their own thing… there is stuff happening independently by artistes who feel inspired and creative but not by any system that’s giving them foundation or supporting their efforts.”

Barbara Arrindell–
“Nellie Robinson, Dame Nellie Robinson is listed somewhere in our history as being the first chairperson of the artists association of Antigua and Barbuda, but so is a lady named Elizabeth Pickney…back in 17something… I found one in the 18th century too… we’ve had an artists association here many times and it’s been so far apart that each person thinks of themselves as the first chairperson of… in terms of history, there’s a book called A Brief History of Antigua written by Brian Dyde. Brian Dyde wrote brief histories for about four or five islands around the Caribbean, if it was five, four of them are still in print, guess which one is not in print, the other four were taken on and used in the school systems in the other islands, guess which one they couldn’t even sell one print run for…?”

Dorbrene O’Marde–
“We must be thinking about the journey that brought us to that point in 1981…what does that mean to us…1981 is really just the start of a journey, the start of a process…the discussion we’re having here is the absence of guidance from our institutions, the ministry of culture…what independence in this particular world means, what it must mean, how we protect it, and the role clearly that artists, those of us on this panel, that artists have in doing that, that that role must also be encouraged, must also be supported, must also be helped, be guided in many ways…this is where we must be.”

That’s just some excerpts and here’s some post chat coverage in the paper:

And that’s that. Or it was, because now (October 20th 2017 update) there’s this  I saw this play when it was staged in the King George V grounds in 2007 – I remember thinking it was quite ambitious, especially as James was the only cast member (really) with professional theatrical background and given that it spanned pre-Colombian times to the then present. If you missed it, this is an opportunity to catch a screening of it inspired, I understand, by that Big Issues episode; so that’s something.

Oh, one last thing, on the Observer programme, I mentioned that you could find here on this site the open letter read by Barbara Arrinell when she resigned her post as literary arts comp coordinator at the 2011 awards ceremony, the last time any type of literary arts anything (to my knowledge) was held during Independence until last year when there was a lit arts forum and an essay competition. There is no 2017 lit arts activity – apart from the Harriet Tubman workshops and play listed on the programme – and no visual arts activity apart from the fashion competition and show. You can, of course, double check the link to the programme linked earlier in this post.

I think that’s everything.

p.s. the slide show at the top is some of the works produced or co-produced – and/or projects with which they were involved – by the panelists quoted in this post.

As with all content on Wadadli Pen, except otherwise noted, this is written by Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Musical Youth, With Grace, and Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure). All Rights Reserved. If you enjoyed it, check out http://jhohadli.wordpress.com Please note that, except otherwise noted, images on this site also need to be cleared if you wish to use them for any purpose. Thanks.