One of the ways team member (author of Turtle Beach, The Legend of Bat’s Cave and Other Stories, and even more stories) Barbara A. Arrindell is trying to help you win is with an announced March 18th 2021 workshop. This series of short workshops will provide you with tips that may help you to select your topic, develop your characters, allow your creativity to flow, utilize local sites and folklore, and much more. You must pre-register. Do this by sending a message via the link above or via email to barbaraarrindell@yahoo.com. The zoom link and additional information will then be sent to you. Register early to secure your spot. This year Wadadli Pen is accepting entries from children and adults.
A recent commenter here on the blog asked about the submission form. “Would it be possible to fill out the application form electronically please? I do not have access to a printer right now and it would be very useful if alternative methods could be made available. Thank you!” – A. It’s a fair point; we should look in to uploading directly via submittable or other platform, but to be clear you do not need to print the form and you are submitting electronically. What you need to do is download and fill out the form electronically and submit said form via email as an attachment along with your entry, also as an attachment, to wadadlipen@gmail.com
A questioner to my DMs wondered if there was a penalty for going over the word count. – A. We’ve actually extended the word count from 750 to 1000 words in recent years. Since doing so we’ve gotten fairly strict about the word count. Challenge yourself to tell your story with precision – after all, you already have 250 extra words to play with.
We also had a request to direct mail the submission form; obviously it’s not practical for us to do so for everyone. We simply don’t have the time nor the numbers. But I’ve doublechecked that the form is downloadable and can be filled out electronically; so please act accordingly. Find the form and submission guidelines above at Wadadli Pen 2021.
ICYMI
In case you missed it, we’ve followed up our launch announcement with a second press release shouting out the latest patrons to come on board. The news you may be particularly interested in from that is that, while the Challenge is open to all ages this year, we will have a special prize for 12 and younger aged writers, sponsored by Cedric Holder, who is doing so in the name of his son Zuri, a former Wadadli Pen finalist who died tragically in the first road fatality of 2021. Also team member Floree Williams Whyte’s Moondancer Books has sponsored the ad below.
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. (in brackets, as much as I can remember, I’ll add a note re how I sourced the information)
Kudos
Dawn French, Zoanne Evans, Adaiah Sanford, Arnold Ward, Karllen Lawrence, and Robertha Alleyne have been named as finalists in the first annual Caribbean Literary Works competition. The top applicants’ video pitches can be viewed on organizer the Ducreay Foundation, a non profit collaborating on the prize with Reycraft Books’, social media. At the end of the competition there will be three top finalists. Winner: Reycraft publishing contract +5000 USD advance+ royalties from books being sold Second Prize:2000 USD + Full free editorial review and mentorship by REYCRAFT Books Third Prize:1000 USD+Full free editorial review and mentorship by REYCRAFT Books The foundation – through its educational workshops, forums and activities strives to bridge the gap between different peoples, genders and backgrounds. It was founded by Ms. Dahlia A. Ducreay commonly known as “Dee”. She is a bilingual educational economist (Fluent Mandarin and English) from the Commonwealth of Dominica with extensive social, educational and economic development experience, who has worked and lived in Asia (People’s Republic of China) for over 10 years.
Reycraft Books is an American publishing house based in New York.
(Source – This one came in via email and I subsequently communicated with the founder Dahlia Ducreay)
Milestones
Lorna Goodison’s tenure as poet laureate of Jamaica has come to an end with well deserved plaudits. Goodison succeeded Mervyn Morris. Her tenure ran for three years. Jamaica is one of a small handful of Caribbean nations that has laureate programmes. The laureate works to enliven literary activity around literary arts in country and between the country and the world. (Source – St. Lucian poet John Robert Lee shared this article via email)
Caribbean Arts Funding (an update)
Arts funding and/or philanthropy allowing Caribbean writers to do what they do, create, is rare. But Catapult – a joint initiative by American Friends of Jamaica (a NY non profit with a 40 year history of funding charitable organizations in Jamaica), Kingston Creative (a Jamaica non profit set up in 2017 to enable creatives to succeed), and Fresh Milk (a Barbados charity which provides residencies and programmes to enable Caribbean artists to grow)- has made lemonade of these 2020 lemons, providing something that has long been needed – financial support with opportunities to write, to connect, to share, to grow. “In recognition of the serious impact of COVID-19 on the creative industries, a $320,000 fund from the Open Society Foundations was awarded to the American Friends of Jamaica, in collaboration with Kingston Creative and The Fresh Milk Art Platform, to support artists, creators and cultural practitioners throughout the Caribbean region. This grant recognizes the current global pandemic, a crisis that disproportionately affects the creative sector in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), few of which have the resources to provide adequate support to those working in this vital sector.” (Source: ACP-EU Culture)
We have reported on the Catapult grants in trickles but thought it prudent to provide a round up with context. The funding has been allocated to six areas: Caribbean Arts Showcase, Caribbean Creative Online, Digital Creative Training, Consultancy Vouchers, Lockdown Virtual Salon, and Stay Home Artist Residency.
The Caribbean Arts Showcase will present features by artists in written, video, or audio format which will be published to promote the talent and diversity in the region, and to give insight into the work and life of creatives.
“The Caribbean Creative Online component of CATAPULT invites artists to share a recording of a performance, talk, webinar, workshop or other online activity on the platform of their choice. The goal is to increase artists’ visibility in the online arena, raise their comfort level with performing in the digital space, and support artists financially during the pandemic by allowing them to earn from online activities…Each of the 100 artists selected from across the English, French, Spanish and Dutch speaking Caribbean will receive a grant of $500 USD.” This list includes Jamaica’s Amina Blackwood-Meeks, whom Antiguans-Barbudans should know from her time here, Juleus Ghunta, whose works has been shared several times on the blog, AdZiko Simba Gegele, known around here as the first Burt Award winner, the Rebel Women Lit book club, Dominica’s Celia Sorhaindo, among others – including, as you’ll see below, yours truly.
“The Digital Creative Training Workshops , creatives will develop essential digital knowledge and business skills to enable them to reach new audiences and markets which as a result of COVID-19 now must be accessed through digital tools and platforms.” There courses were held between September and October.
“The CATAPULT Consultancy Voucher Programme provides professional expertise to cultural practitioners to aid in the development of entrepreneurial potential through their online presence. Creatives will receive consulting support from technical experts from the region to set up a website, social media platforms, or online store to increase their ability to conduct e-commerce and market their works globally. Each selected creative, 40 in total, will receive a $500 USD voucher to be used for website, social media, and/or e-commerce capability development.” Winners include Jamaican indie publisher Tanya Batson-Savage.
“The CATAPULT Lockdown Virtual Salon programme aims to mitigate isolation, especially heightened during the current pandemic, by creating virtual platforms for cultural practitioners to engage in discourse about and explore their evolving practices. These one-hour artist talks from their homes or studios will be live-streamed via the Fresh Milk YouTube channel at 1PM and 4PM AST, every Tuesday and Friday between September 29th & November 20th, 2020.” You can also view the full playlist on the Fresh Milk YouTube if you miss the lives.
The Catapult Lockdown Virtual Salon begins here.
“The CATAPULT Stay Home Artist Residency provides opportunities for 24 cultural practitioners from the English, French, Spanish and Dutch speaking Caribbean to be supported while safely remaining in their studios/work-spaces, each of whom will receive a $3,000 USD stipend to produce work over a two-month period.” This is the kind of support artists need and we can all look forward to the work to be produced by the likes of Trinidad and Tobago’s Lisa Allen-Agostini and Shivanee Ramlochan, and Bahamas’ Sonia Farmer, all of whom should be familiar to readers of the blog – with many more to discover.
Fresh Milk’s Founding Director Annalee Davis expressed enthusiasm regarding the partnership. “Fresh Milk is pleased to have the opportunity to partner on this critical project nurturing Caribbean artists. With little support available at the state level for so many cultural practitioners working across this vulnerable region, having an opportunity to facilitate Stay At Home Residencies and Virtual Salons means that more artists can safely remain in their studios and do what they do best-make art!” (Source)
What else to say except more of this, please.
(This has multiple sources – obviously, I’m an applicant and grantee but also the Salon updates have been flooding my instagram, and before that artist announcements on being awarded a grant has popped up on my facebook)
Events
Amanda Choo Quan, 2020 winner of the Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize, is hosting an online series called ‘Let’s Be Real’ — which takes the form of frank, solution-oriented discussions with editors, educators, agents, and more. “We aim to place Caribbean writers in conversation with people they would not normally have access to — international allies already dedicated to championing marginalised voices,” Choo Quan said. LIT’S BE REAL runs for a four-episode season every other Wednesday (4 and 18 November, 2 and 16 December, 2020), aiming to follow the arc of a writer’s career. Topics covered will include MFA and academic programmes, pitching and submitting articles to publications, and the troubling question of international audiences misunderstanding a Caribbean writer’s “voice.” Read more here. (Source – this one came to the Wadadli Pen mailbox from the Bocas Lit Fest, which also used the opportunity to announce season 3 of its virtual Bios and Bookmarks series, a series initially launched during COVID-19 lockdown)
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The Best of Books bookstore braved the COVID-19 storm to host a live outside (masked up) meet the author event during the Independence season in Antigua and Barbuda. Of course, you can get the books in store any time.
Speaking of events, some of the videos I need to share are not a good fit for my youtube channel, so I made one for Wadadli Pen. Now, I just need an intern to run it. Here’s the first vid, from the Best of Books author event.
(Source – having accepted an invite from the bookshop, I was at the event and asked them and participating author Brenda Lee Browne to send me pictures and video)
I will be recording a virtual Ask Me Anything and Reading as part of my Catapult Caribbean Creatives Online award. Ask your questions about themes, craft, and story related to my writing. Get them in this week by leaving them in the comments of any of my social media – video questions also welcomed. ETA: intake of questions have ended; video being prepped. Read about it here.
The National Public Library of Antigua and Barbuda’s Author of the Month series is back and the next author up is Floree Williams Whyte – author of Pink Teacups and Blue Dresses, Through the Window, and The Wonderful World of Yohan. Floree’s reading and book discussion is on November 25th 2020. And the best part is you can watch live on facebook from home. (Source – The NPL is active on facebook and I may have seen this flyer in my newsfeed there)
The Royal Society of Literature, in honour of its 200th birthday, and Bocas Lit Fest, in honour of its 10th, will be hosting an event, ‘What’s So Great about Jean Rhys?’ Dominican writer Jean Rhys wrote the seminal work Wide Sargasso Sea. Participants will include Trinidad and Tobago poet, columnist, and blogger Shivanee Ramlochan with novelist Linda Grant and academic Lauren Elkin. It’s on November 19th 2020. Register for the online event here. (Source – this came to my inbox with my rejection notification re the V S Pritchett prize)
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.
August 15th – 16th 2019 – The 14th Annual Antigua-Barbuda Conference and Distinguished Lecture (a joint project of the University off the West Indies Open Campus – Antigua and Barbuda, The Antigua and Barbuda Studies Association, and the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Enlightenment Academy). This year’s theme is Aft the Ecological and Politica Storms: Whither Barbuda’s Development. Venue – the UWI Open Campus, between Queen Elizabeth and Sir Sydney Walling highways. Confirmed participants are Glenn Sankatsing, keynote speaker and author of Quest to Rescue Our Future (“Quest to Rescue Our Future chronicles the path of humanity, diagnoses our present misfortunes, identifies the dangerous trends and maps the desirable and feasible futures. Most importantly, it locates the transformative social forces that are still intact – the moral reserves of humanity – and delves into the strategy and actions that can shape a different version of humanity), Conference organizer Paget Henry, Valerie Knowles Combie from the University of the Virgin Islands, editor of The Caribbean Writer literary journal Alscess Lewis-Brown, psychologist and poet Elaine Olaoye, Bernadette Farquhar whose specialities are French and linguistics, Antigua and Barbuda’s press secretary Lionel ‘Max’ Hurst, Anique John (law/social justice), Hourglass Investment CEO Norris Morris Harris, and a special panel consisting of secondary school students). For more information contact: Paget Henry (paget_henry@brown.edu), Janet Lofgren (janetlofgren@gmail.com), Zane Peters (zane.peters@open.uwi.edu), or Schuyler Esprit (schuyler.esprit@dec.uwi.edu)
July 31st 2019 –
July to August 2019 – Antigua’s Carnival
July and August – sessions to be held on July 22nd – 26th & August 12th – 16th 2019 – flyer and registration form copied below-contact me at jhohadli at gmail dot com for more information or to submit registration form: JSYWP Registration Form 2019
As with all content on Wadadli Pen, unless otherwise indicated, this is written by author and Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator Joanne C. Hillhouse. All rights reserved.
Six shortlisted writers have been named though dampened by the concurrent announcement that the CODE sponsored Burt Award for teen/young adult Caribbean literature is coming to an end. The award was first bestowed in 2014 but with the death of its founder Canadian philanthropist Bill Burt in 2017 has come a shift in priorities – reportedly to environmental matters, which is a pressing concern in these perilous times. The Caribbean leg of the award has been administered these five years by the Bocas Literary Festival in Trinidad and Tobago in partnership with the Canadian non-profit CODE which runs similar programmes in Africa and among the indigenous community in Canada – all of which will need alternative funding if they are to continue. The purpose and effect of the award has been to generate and distribute new writing from typically marginalized communities with the youth population as a specific target.
This year’s short list from a field of 46 consists of:
Jomo’s Story by Nastassian Brandon (Jamaica)
The Unmarked Girl by Jeanelle Frontin (Trinidad and Tobago)
The Accidental Prize by Tamika Gibson (Trinidad and Tobago)
The Mermaid Pools by Rehannah Azeeyah Khan (Trinidad and Tobago)
Daylight Come by Diana McCaulay (Jamaica)
Rise Of The Clearrock by Celia Sankar/ S.P. Claret (Trinidad and Tobago)
McCaulay and Gibson are repeat Burt finalists – Gibson placed first in 2016 for Dreams Beyond the Shore, subsequently published by Jamaica’s Blue Banyan Books, and McCaulay’s Gone to Drift was second placed in 2015 and subsequently published by Papillote Press of Dominica and the UK. The list of past Burt finalists can be found here.
From a 2019 Burt/Bocas email: ‘Action, adventure, fantasy, myth, and forbidden love are some of the themes that feature in the shortlist. The judges were effusive in their praise for the quality of the writing, the credibility of the characters and the effectiveness of the plots in these six titles. Their comments on the entries range from “haunting” and “dark” to “enjoyable, fun, educational” and “ground breaking”.’
The winner and up to two finalists will be announced during the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, May 1st to 5th in Trinidad, with $10,000 CDN going to the winning book and $2,000 CDN each to two finalists. A distinctive feature of the Burt award which accepts both published and unpublished manuscripts is that it invites regional publishers to bid for the opportunity to publish one of the winning titles, and purchases and distributes copies of the finished product – the former helping to build the publishing infrastructure in the region, the latter ensuring that the books get in to the hands of their target readership.
Personal note: I am sorry to see this competition die (potentially, if it doesn’t find new funding – though Bocas has done a good job of sourcing alternative funding for, for instance, the Hollick Arvon prize which is now the the Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize). I think Burt has been good in terms of generating fresh content and creating renewed enthusiasm among secondary schoolers especially for Caribbean writing to which they feel they can relate. That’s certainly been my experience with Musical Youth, my second placed Burt title, published by Caribbean Reads Publishing, in its inaugural year, 2014, and now on schools reading lists in two Caribbean islands (but more than that the word of mouth enthusiasm from teenage readers). I am happy to have had the opportunity to serve as a Burt Award workshop leader here in Antigua, as a judge of the Caribbean leg of the award, as a mentor of the Africa leg, and as a Burt title editor; I have also enthusiastically promoted the programme – whether reviewing books like All over Again, Gone to Drift, Home Home, and Inner City Girl, which are unsurprisingly of high quality, or encouraging people to enter the competition. I only wish more of us, small islanders, had made it to the winners’ circle – to date (not including 2019) winning books have hailed from Trinidad and Tobago (5), Jamaica (3), Guyana (2), Bermuda (2), Barbados (1), Puerto Rico (1), and Antigua and Barbuda (1). I want to thank Mr. Bill Burt for this initiative; he did a good thing.
I hope that some other philanthropist or philanthropists sees that arts funding is also a priority – especially in such perilous times.
As with all content (words, images, other) 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, and Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure). All Rights Reserved. You can also subscribe to and/or follow the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks. And remember while linking and sharing the links, referencing and excerpting, with credit, are okay, lifting whole content (articles, images, other) from the site without asking is not cool. Respect copyright.
Let me make sure I have this right because it’s not my usual forte though it caught my interest because it was about motivating young people to innovate solutions to climate change – what I hear is encouraging young people to create. Right?
That’s Team Project Jaguar of Antigua and Barbuda, the youngest team in the contest, collecting their $5000 prize at DadliHack 2019 for a “Data analysis system that logs data from events like Sargassum seaweed occurrences and meteorological data (sea surface temperature, tides, winds)…then applie(s) it to statistical algorithms to analyze patterns, trends and make predictions. Chemical sensors will be placed on relevant shorelines to detect and log the presence of Sargassum. The insight will be sold to hotels, restaurants and other stakeholders in the tourism industry so that they can prepare and tackle the problem before it even hits our shores. It’s all about being proactive rather than reactive to the effects of climate change on islands.” (Source: oceangeneration.org)
This innovation – an online platform called NADIS – was adjudged winner alongside reportedly fierce competition from across the region (who did their three-minute pitches via skype), “based on criteria including speed of build and delivery of the solution, who and how many people they would be helping, and the self-resilience of the solution.” (Source: oceangeneration.org)
Ocean Generation, according to their website, worked along with local company ACT, which supplied the high speed internet connection that allowed the hackathon teams to explore and develop their ideas; and the goal was to build climate change awareness among young people. “Ocean Generation held a tech training course for children ages 12-16 to develop their interests and inform them of the potential perils of climate change. The focus was on the urgency for an elevated infrastructure, and the required refurbished resilience as they pave the road ahead.” (Source: oceangeneration.org)
Pitched ideas “ranged from community application to connect skilled laborers to find employment after natural disasters, to … a post-disaster drone system to identify crisis areas… (to) an idea to assist commercial and residential properties with energy efficient technology which can improve the energy management of small island developing states.” The panel of judges included Donna Levin (MIT business professor), Dr Martin Edlund CEO of Minesto, Jonas Michanek SONY/IDEON executive, alongside local Antiguan representatives.
Going forward a hub will be set up in Antigua and Barbuda to support not only the winners and to incubate their idea, but a variety of ideas from the DadliHack with the goal of activating and possibly testing winning climate change responses as soon as 2019.
Kudos.
As with all content on wadadlipen.wordpress.com, except otherwise noted, this is written by Joanne C. Hillhouse (founder and coordinator of Wadadli Pen, and author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Musical Youth, With Grace, Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure, and Oh Gad!). All Rights Reserved. Subscribe to the site to keep up with future updates.
I have opened two rejections in my mailbox in the past hour. That acknowledgment (after several books and more than 10 years as a published writer) is made in the spirit of commiseration with anyone feeling discouraged today as they navigate this writing life.
The first rejection “yada yada yada” ended with “Your work came very close! Please try us next year.” And I will. I joke that it’s because writers are masochists but I think it’s because a commitment to the writing life means picking yourself up, skinned knees and all, and walking on until your legs give out … or maybe until you find something that pulls you as much as the writing life does.
And so, turning to that other entry from the rejection file, to the 1476 5182 short story writers at all different stages and levels of this writing life from all over the Commonwealth who didn’t make the cut for this year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize, I want to take a moment to say (to all of us, because rejections are a part of the writing life but they still suck) be encouraged, keep writing, keep striving to be better writers, stay on that road. And put some iodine on those knees.
Now shake off the dispiritedness and any badmindness you may be feeling (let’s be real), and join me in saying to the writers of the 24 shortlisted stories, big up yuh chest!
You’ve earned it.
Big up especially to the Caribbean writers making the cut Jamaicans Marcus Bird (An Elephant in the Kingdom) and Sharma Taylor (Son Son’s Birthday), perennial finalist of this and other Prizes (and published author) Trinidad and Tobago writer Kevin Hosein (Passage), and Breanne McIvor, also of T & T (The Boss). Caribbean to the World!
The regional winners – i.e. winners from the Caribbean, Canada and Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific – will be announced in late June, and the overall winner in late July.
As with all content (words, images, other) 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, and Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure). All Rights Reserved. You can also subscribe to and/or follow the site to keep up with future updates. Thanks. And remember while linking and sharing the links, referencing and excerpting, with credit, are okay, lifting whole content (articles, images, other) from the site without asking is not cool. Respect copyright.
Did you submit to the Commonwealth Short Story Competition? I hope you did, I posted a reminder in Opportunites Too. Are you anxiously awaiting the results? Exhale, nothing to be done now but wait…and keep writing. Are you curious about who’s judging this year’s entries? That I can help with as the judges’ bios landed in my inbox this week.
“The 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize judging panel is chaired by Sarah Hall. The international judging panel comprises a judge from each of the five regions – Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean and the Pacific.”
Of the chair, the correspondence said, “Sarah Hall received a master of letters in creative writing from Scotland’s St. Andrews University and has published five award-winning novels and a collection of short stories, Beautiful Indifference which won the Portico Prize for Fiction 2012 and the Edge Hill short story prize. In 2013 she was named one of Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’, and she has won the BBC National Short Story Award and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has judged a number of prestigious literary awards and prizes including the Man Booker. She has tutored for the Faber Academy, The Guardian, the Arvon Foundation, and has taught creative writing in a variety of establishments in the UK and abroad.”
Fingers crossed, right? I mean, the only thing that’s up for grabs is “a total prize money of £15,000. The overall winner receives £5,000, one of the highest amounts for an international short story prize open to unpublished writers. Regional winners receive £2,500” – and the distinction of winning the Commonwealth Short Story Competition.
I’ll admit that this contest wasn’t really on my radar before and it only is this year because my niece emerged as the winner. In any case, it’s in step with some of what we do here, share and celebrate young Antiguans and Barbudans doing creative things; so I thought this was an appropriate platform to share. Per coverage in the local press, Nicoya Henry (in black and braids, 2nd from right in the top image) has emerged winner, from a field of nine, of the 2017 Courts Fashionista Competition.
“In a release from Courts, the furniture store said the event was conceptualized with the primary purpose of improving and developing the talent of our youth.” – from the Daily Observer, September 1st 2017
Growing up, Nicoya’s love of fashion and modelling ran alongside her love of art and design – she’s modelled on local, regional, and international runaways and she’s won visual art competitions like St. Anthony’s Sidewalk Art Festival. In recent years, her love of art has found expression through fashion – she’s performed well in the fashiontastic design competition (and in fact, runners-up in this contest, Shem Henry and Shirrine Gillon, are names I first came to know at Fashiontastic), organizes and promotes a fashion event called Fashion Formation, and gets her side hustle on creating clothing. So, the evolution continues with her win of the Courts competition.
It was a very Project Runway type of competition in spirit – right down to competitors getting a stipend to purchase material needed to create their designs (the equivalent of having access to that store they do on the show) and designing in response to a unique, shall we say, challenge. As Nicoya explained it to me, contestants had to do a design based on a Courts product (for those who don’t know, Courts is a furniture store). This was her item:
This was her drawing:
And this is the final design on the runway:
She walked with EC$2500 and the title, and said in the post-interview: “I feel very, very great that I won. I put in a lot of hard work, and it wasn’t easy breaking those mirrors. Right now, I still have splinters in my fingers, but it has paid off.” – from the Daily Observer, September 4th 2017
Cool, right?
To quote an audience member quoted in the paper “Our people have talent and I believe they can compete on any stage around the world.” – from the Daily Observer, September 4th 2017
Belated congratulations to the Antigua and Barbuda National Youth Choir on being joint winners of the Commonwealth Choir Competition. The sing-off was held in 2016 and the winners announced in March 2017. Their entry was Unity written by John Hewlett and Dr. George Roberts.
According to this Observer article, the choir will be flown to London in 2018 to record the winning song.
Congrats to them…belatedly. So that you don’t have to depend on me to keep up with the ABNYC, like their page.
Here, Wadadli Pen will be celebrating award wins (including sometimes award nominations and long and shortlisting, and accolades received) by Antiguan and Barbudan writers. It came about because I’d bump in to laudatory accomplishments (beyond publishing) but couldn’t figure out where to put them. The Antiguan and Barbuda Writings pages are bibliographies, and neither the Reviews page nor the journal publications page were right. So, here we go. Please note, this page is a work-in-progress. As with the other named sections, it will be updated somewhere between when I find updates and when I find the time to post them. I’m not ranking the awards at this point (some are local, some regional, some international, some prestigious, some not so much…I’m just adding them as I can). Primary focus will be on awards related to literary arts. No omissions or errors (and there are plenty, no doubt) are intentional. As always if you have information that will help me flesh out the content, let me know. Conversely, if you wish to be removed, no problem, just let me know that too.
Wadadli Youth Pen Prize Challenge wins are not listed here but if you want to see the winners of that in-house prize through the years, go here.
2022 –
Kimolisa Mings claimed an EC$1000 cheque for submitting the winning piece to the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Authority’s ‘Love and Wanderlust’ romance writing campaign with “Rule No. 3”.
Bert Kirchner, Howard Allen, Dr. Alvin Edwards (contributions to film development), and Joanne C. Hillhouse (commitment to literacy) receive awards from the Antigua and Barbuda Film Academy/Motion Picture Association of Antigua and Barbuda.
Motion (Wendy Brathwaite) is a Canadian Screen Awards nominee for writing the episode ‘Eyes Up’ of season 3 of the TV series Coroner. Brathwaite was also selected in 2022 for the CBC-BIPOC TV & Film, CFC Showrunner Catalyst.
Akillah’s Escape, a feature film written by Wendy Motion Brathwaite, who is Canadian of Antiguan-Barbudan descent, received eight nominations and five awards at the Canadian Screen Awards, including one for original screenplay (also cinematography, sound editing, sound mixing, and casting).
Motion shared the screenwriting award with Charles Officer, who is also the film’s director.
Elaine Jacobs, born in Antigua, though living most of her life in the US Virgin Islands was named in December 2021 as the winner of the Marvin E. Williams Literary Prize for new or emerging writers from The Caribbean Writer. She won for the story ‘Going without Shoes’.
Tawhinda Tanya Evanson’s Book of Wings was named a Quill & Quire Book of the Year.
Kincaid was named one of 12 inaugural Royal Society of Literature honorees of the RSL International Writers Programme. The RSL International Writers programme was announced as part of RSL 200, a five-year festival launched in 2020 with a series of major new initiatives and 60 new appointments championing the great diversity of writing and writers in the UK. The programme is a new award recognising the contribution of writers across the globe to literature in English, and the power of literature to transcend borders to bring people together. RSL International Writers celebrates the many ways in which literature can shape a future world.
Joanne C. Hillhouse’s short story “Freedom Cup – The Games are Coming” was one of 30 stories long listed for the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean
– Canada-based Antiguan and Barbudan writer Gayle Gonsalves was a National Indie Excellence Finalist in Canada in the multi-cultural category for her novel My Stories have No Endings. She also placed second in the Women’s Fiction category of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association and CIIPA Education and Literacy Foundation’s awards. She was named a distinguished favourite in the NYC Big Book Award.
Ripped Bodice Awards for Excellence in Romantic Fiction (2020) – Rilzy Adams, Go Deep. Adams has also been nominated for other books and other industry awards – Swoonies, Black Girls Who Write (Go Deep nominated for Best Black Erotica), and Rebel Women Lit readers choice among them (making it on to short lists in some cases).
Wadadli Pen 2020 winner Andre J. P. Warner’s winning story Bright Future for Tomorrow was awarded best short fiction in the first Rebel Women Lit Caribbean Readers Awards. Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator Joanne C. Hillhouse was a RWL CRA honoree . There were several other nominees from the Wadadli Pen family and from Antigua and Barbuda; full list of nominees can be found here.
Joanne C. Hillhouse’s short story “Vincent” was one of 21 stories long listed for the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean
Richard Georges who was born in Trinidad and resides in the BVI but has Antiguan roots was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the story “Shedding”
Richard Georges who was born in Trinidad and resides in the BVI but has Antiguan roots won the 2020 Bocas Prize for his poetry collection Epiphaneia
The Directorate of Gender Affairs held its first ever Women of Wadadli Awards – a number of artists were recipients – Heather Doram (visual artist) for Culture, Noreen Phillips for Fashion, Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator and author Joanne C. Hillhouse for Literature, Colleen Simpson (author of A Likkle Bit a Dis & a Likkle Bit a Dat) for Culinary Arts, dramatist, photographer, writer, and educator Zahra Airall for Fine Arts, Wadadli Pen partner and patron and a writer and dramatist in her own right Barbara Arrindell as a Change Maker, Marion Byron for Music, Mickel Brann for Media/Journalism, and Mako Williams, who is also a visual artist, for Science and Technology. Details in this WoW article in Observer
Richard Georges wins a fellowship to the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study – Georges is Trinidad born and lives in the BVI but he also has Antiguan roots
Winners of Flow Mobile Film Competition (Antigua and Barbuda) –
The top three winners in category 12-16 years
1st Sontee’ Beazer – “Independence”
2nd Jontae Cornelius -“What Independence Day Means to Me”
3rd Kaleb Kidane Hatton – “What does Independence mean to me”.
The top three winners from the category 17- 30 years old
1st Moses Wiltshire – “My Independence”
2nd Bernella Vidal – “What Independence Means To Me”
3rd Dalisha Spencer – “Independence”
The top three winners in the 31+ category
1st Romeo “Kulcha D” Reid – “Kulcha D Independence”
2nd Laune Isaac – “Reflections On Independence
3rd Colin John-Jenkins -“What Independence means to me”
The PEN America Literary Awards Longlist – The Circuit: A Tennis Odyssey by Rowan Ricardo Phillips longlisted for the PEN/ESPN AWARD FOR LITERARY SPORTS WRITING ($5,000) To honor a nonfiction book on the subject of sports published in 2018
Richard Georges who was born in Trinidad and resides in the BVI but has Antiguan roots was longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for his poetry collection Giant
2018 –
Richard Georges who was born in Trinidad and resides in the BVI but has Antiguan roots was highly commended for the Forward Prize for his poetry collection Giant
Joanne C Hillhouse selected for the Commonwealth Writers fiction writing workshop
2017 –
Richard Georges who was born in Trinidad and resides in the BVI but has Antiguan roots was short listed for the Forward Prize for best first collection for his poetry collection Make Us All Islands
Ashley Bryan – Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King Honor for writing and illustration, Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan
Althea Romeo Mark awarded the Arts and Science Poetry Prize for poems published in POEZY 21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational Noptile De Poezie De Curtea De Arges, Curtea De Arges, Romania
Alexis Andrews wins the Donald Gosling Award for best television or film contribution at the Maritime Media Awards for Vanishing Sail –
Richard Georges who was born in Trinidad and resides in the BVI but has Antiguan roots won the Marvin E Williams prize from The Caribbean Writer for ‘X’ and was shortlisted for the Small Axe Poetry prize for “Darkening/Freeport”
Ashley Bryan – short-listed for the Kirkus Prize and received a Newberry Honor
Anisfield-Wolf book award + Griffin Poetry Prize for Heaven by Rowan Ricardo Philips
Joanne C. Hillhouse selected for the CaribLit editing workshop in Guyana
Richard Georges who was born in Trinidad and resides in the BVI but has Antiguan roots was shortlisted for the Wasifiri New Writing Prize – Poetry for ‘Bush Tea’
Joanne C. Hillhouse’s Commonwealth Short Story submission “Amelia at Devil’s Bridge” was selected for publication in Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean – consisting entirely of brand-new stories by authors living in the region, gathered from among the very best entries to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize from islands throughout the Caribbean
Jamaica Kincaid receives the Before Columbus Foundation Book Award for See Now Then
Melissa Gomez and Cinque Productions’ film Silent Music wins Best Documentary feature at the Maine Deaf Film Festival
Rowan Ricardo Philips is a Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award winner for poetry + NAACP Image Award finalist for Outstanding Literary Work, Poetry + PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry winner + Whiting Award winner, for The Ground
Althea Romeo-Mark is awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay prize by The Caribbean Writer for the short story ‘Bitterleaf’ which had been published in 2008, Volume 22
Floree Williams (now Whyte) receives the (Antigua and Barbuda) National Youth Award for achievement in the literary arts; Zahra Airall also receives an NYA in this year
Howard and Mitzi Allen receives National Youth Awards as Pioneers in Filmmaking
V-Monologues literary prize to Shakeema Edwards from Women of Antigua; who that year also wins the Dancing Nude in the Moonlight Next Chapter contest sponsored by the Best of Books
Joanne C. Hillhouse received the Michael and Marilee Fairbanks International Fellowship to participate in the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Vermont
Althea Prince receives the Antigua and Barbuda International Literary Festival Award for Excellence in the Literary Arts
2006 –
Ashley Bryan – U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award (the highest recognition for creators of children’s books)
Carolyn Providence is nominated for the Best Spoken Word album at the National Underground Spoken Word and Poetry Awards.
Vivian Michael and teen novelist Akilah Jardine receive (Antigua and Barbuda) National Youth Awards for achievement in the literary arts; Joanne C. Hillhouse is named honourable mention.
Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda’s Jubilee Award for Outstanding Contributions and Achievements in the Field of Arts and Culture to Althea Prince
Ashley Bryan – the Atlanta Literary Festival was named for him and he also received the University of Southern Mississippi Medallion from the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival
Joanne C. Hillhouse, Joy Lawrence, Sylvanus Barnes, and others received a UNESCO Honour Award for contribution to literacy and the literary arts in Antigua and Barbuda
2002 –
Motion won the 2002 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation National Poetry Face-Off competition.
Mary Geo Quinn Highly Commended for her short story “Joe”, an entry for the Commonwealth short story prize
Joanne C. Hillhouse selected for the Caribbean Fiction Writers Summer Institute at University of Miami
Althea Romeo Mark’s story “Easter Sunday” wins the Stauffacher English Short Story Competition/Switzerland
1992 –
Joanne C. Hillhouse second placed in the Rick James Ensemble One Act Play Competition with the play “Barman’s Blues”; Zahra Airall wins a prize in that same competition as the Youngest person to enter
Roy H. S. Dublin’s Tomorrow’s Blossoms, first published in 1934 to commemorate the tercentenary year of the colonization of Antigua and the centenary year of emancipation, is awarded the King’s Medal
Date unknown, unsure, unconfirmed –
Althea Romeo Mark wins a scholarship to the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference
As with all content on Wadadli Pen, except otherwise noted, this is written by Antiguan and Barbudan writer Joanne C. Hillhouse (author of The Boy from Willow Bend, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, Oh Gad!, Musical Youth, Dancing Nude in the Moonlight 10th Anniversary Edition and Other Writings, With Grace, The Jungle Outside, and Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure; also a freelance writer, editor, writing coach and workshop facilitator). All Rights Reserved. If you like the content here follow or recommend the blog, also, check out my page on Amazon, WordPress, and/or Facebook, and help spread the word about Wadadli Pen and my books. Thank you.
And the best part is you can watch live on facebook from home. (Source – The NPL is active on facebook and I may have seen this flyer in my newsfeed there)
I’ll admit that this contest wasn’t really on my radar before and it only is this year because my niece emerged as the winner. In any case, it’s in step with some of what we do here, share and celebrate young Antiguans and Barbudans doing creative things; so I thought this was an appropriate platform to share. Per coverage in the local press, Nicoya Henry (in black and braids, 2nd from right in the top image) has emerged winner, from a field of nine, of the 2017 Courts Fashionista Competition.
receive awards from the Antigua and Barbuda Film Academy/Motion Picture Association of Antigua and Barbuda.
named to 
– Canada-based Antiguan and Barbudan writer Gayle Gonsalves was a National Indie Excellence Finalist in Canada in the multi-cultural category for her novel My Stories have No Endings. She also placed second in the Women’s Fiction category of the Colorado Independent Publishers Association and CIIPA Education and Literacy Foundation’s awards. She was named a distinguished favourite in the NYC Big Book Award.
Wadadli Pen founder and coordinator Joanne C. Hillhouse was a RWL CRA honoree 
. There were several other nominees from the Wadadli Pen family and from Antigua and Barbuda; full list of nominees can be found 
Melissa Gomez’s film Silent Music wins the Audience Choice Award at the Toronto Deaf Film and Arts Festival
Joanne C. Hillhouse receives the David Hough Literary Prize from The Caribbean Writer
V-Monologues literary prize to Shakeema Edwards from Women of Antigua; who that year also wins the Dancing Nude in the Moonlight Next Chapter contest sponsored by the Best of Books
Wadadli Pen 