HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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 – it is understood that this is the original sourcing and additional research would have been done by me to build the information shared here – credit and link back if you use).
Accolades
ABS TV/Radio General Manager Erna Mae Brathwaite is one of four outstanding Antiguans and Barbudans to be awarded in the King’s New Year’s Honours for 2023. Mrs. Brathwaite is being appointed as an Ordinary Member of the Civil Division of the Order of the British Empire, MBE for services to Youth and Community Development.
(Source – CBU Secretariat email)
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The (Antigua and Barbuda) National Youth Awards have been presented. I am not sure if this is the first post-pandemic and I haven’t seen a lot of press around it – e.g. during the nomination process as I would normally take the time to submit some nominations across the board but especially in literary arts (which is absent from this year’s line-up of winners). Once I realized it had taken place, I dm’d them for the full list as what was available online seemed scattered and incomplete and I was told the full list would be available in the following day’s paper. I have pulled and copied the arts winners below:
Young Media Practitioner – Carlena Knight (who works with Newsco. publishers and producers, respectively, of the Daily Observer newspaper and Observer Radio reporting on sports and news)
Archeology and Heritage Development – Desley Gardner (whom I interviewed for CREATIVE SPACE #18 OF 2021 – CLARENCE HOUSE AND THE COMPLICATED LANDSCAPE OF OUR COLONIAL PAST) and who was a model in CREATIVE SPACE #12 OF 2022 – CUT AND CONTRIVE)
Culture and Performing Arts – Ge’eve Philip (whom I remember as one of the soca breakouts of the 2022 Carnival season)
Fellow soca artiste and producer Bernard ‘Bernie’ DeNully is also a recipient in this category as is soca and calypso artist Trevaughn ‘Lyricksman’ Weston.
He was a first time winner of the jumpy section of the Party Monarch competition and of the road march crown in 2022. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)
Art and Culture
Hell’s Gate steel orchestra in Antigua has resumed its pan academy at the pan yard in Villa. Call 727-8712, 726-8948, or 720-8948 to register. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco)
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‘In fact, Aimable, who said “too many times our culture is pushed to the back”, is aiming for our culture to be as ubiquitous as Chinese restaurants – “we want it to be accessible to everybody.”’ Read new CREATIVE SPACE art and culture column, first of 2023, is an interview with founder of Tropical Fete in New York Alton Aimable.
Obits.
We dedicate this first bulletin of 2023 to the memory of Zuri Holder who died January 4th 2020 after a tragic car accident. Zuri was family and we continue to memorialize him here at Wadadli Pen with a plaque named after him for our junior challenge winners. Keeping him in our hearts.
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Former chief librarian of Antigua and Barbuda Phyllis Mayers has passed. At this writing, unsure of the particulars but the Public Library announced a closure for January 4th 2023 to allow staff to pay their respects.
Mrs. Mayers started as a young librarian at the old High Street building, decimated by the 1974 earthquake, and when I came to know her in the 1980s when I worked a summer job as a teen, was operating upstairs a Market Street retail cloth store. She retired years before the library would finally get a new home in the 2010s. But she kept library services alive during the many lean decades. I remember her warmly.
RIP, Mrs. Mayers. (Source – the National Public Library of Antigua and Barbuda’s facebook page)
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Four-time Dominica calypso king Melvin Constant became his country’s first drowning victim of 2023, while on vacation home from the US where he resides. Constant who went by the stage name Solo won the crown in 1973, 1975, 1976, and 1977, and remained active in competition overseas. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco/Antigua and Barbuda)
Events
The National Cultural Foundation of Barbados has booked St. Maarten/Martin publisher Lasana M. Sekou for a January 14th 2023 professional development session.
(Source – The National Cultural Foundation Barbados on Linkedin)
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Carib Lit Plus has already informed readers of the #WereadJamaica hashtag; here’s another one, #12Caribbeanbooksin2023 from bookstagrammer Rensbookishspace. As with the other hashtag, it’ll be a monthly read-a-long. The first two books are
Myriam J A Chancy is a Haitian-Canadian writer and What Storm What Thunder which was longlisted for the Bocas prize charts the lives of several characters affected by a devastating quake in Port-au-Prince, mirroring the one experienced by Haiti in 2010. Jonathan Escoffery is American-born to Jamaican parents whose journey possibly served as inspiration for If I survive You, a linked multi-generational multi-story collection set off by immigrants fleeing political violence in 1970s Jamaica. It too has numerous accolades including being long listed for the National Book Award in the US. (Source – DanziBooks on Twitter)
Books and Other Reading Material
British and Jamaican writer Leone Ross is editor of a new anthology, first of its kind, Glimpse: An Anthology of Black British Speculative Fiction. The Peepal Tree publication has been rolling out with events since December 2022. (Source – Leone Ross on Instagram)
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In Dominica, the Stories by Children Committee which forms part of the Fernance and Cyrilla Family Club has dedicated its second children’s book – Stories by Children Vol. 2 – When I Grow up – to Kernisha Etienne. Kernisha was reported missing in 2022 and she remains missing at the start of 2023, months later. The book was launched in December at the UWI Open Campus in the nature isle. It is the follow up to Vol. 1 which has been in the marketplace for about one year. Both collections and Vol. 3, to come, includes the best of the works submitted by junior writers, the top winners of whom receive prizes in addition to a copy (to all contributors) of their first authored book. (Source – Daily Observer by Newsco Ltd/Antigua and Barbuda)
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One of the blogs we follow, African Book Addict has posted its annual collage of new books to anticipate in 2023, and we spy some Caribbean titles: Afro-Dominican author Elizabeth Acevedo’s Family Lore, Guadeloupean author Maryse Conde’s The Gospel According to The New World, Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair’s How to say Babylon (a memoir), St. Vincent and Grenadian author Alexis Keir’s Windward Family, and Trinidad and Tobago author Kevin Jared Hosein’s Hungry Ghosts. (Source – This Browne Girl Reads on Facebook)
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The latest edition of Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters, Issue 22: New Vocabularies, is a special Bermuda bicentennial issue. Editor Andre Bagoo said in the introduction, ” The theme of the biennial, which runs at the Bermuda National Gallery until January 7, is ‘A New Vocabulary: Past. Present. Future.’ It’s a theme that not only matches the sense of change and transition precipitated by the ongoing global pandemic, but it also mirrors some of the messy questions of genre that any publication – and I dare say Caribbean publication – has to grapple with.” There are submissions as well from other parts of the Caribbean, primarily Trinidad and Tobago. (Source – N/A)
As with all content on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Musical Youth, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, and The Jungle Outside). All Rights Reserved. Subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks.
Wadadli Pen 