Zahra Gor­don

The third an­nu­al Bo­cas Lit Fest has an­nounced a new award and a part­ner­ship with the Ed­in­burgh Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val.The Bo­cas Lit Fest was launched yes­ter­day at the Na­tion­al Li­brary, Aber­crom­by Street, Port-of-Spain, where the lit­er­ary fes­ti­val will be held from April 25 to 28.Al­most 70 lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al writ­ers will par­tic­i­pate in the event, in­clud­ing Earl Lovelace, Pankaj Mishra, Ma­ri­na Warn­er, Irvine Welsh, Vah­ni Capildeo and Teju Cole.

The new award is the Hen­ry Swanzy Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice to Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, said fes­ti­val di­rec­tor Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown. The award is pre­sent­ed to "some­one whose work has been crit­i­cal to the de­vel­op­ment of Caribbean writ­ers, let­ters and the pub­lish­ing in­dus­try."The first award will be giv­en posthu­mous­ly to John La Rose, founder of the pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny New Bea­con Books.

It is one of four ad­min­is­tered by the fes­ti­val, in­clud­ing the Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, the first Hol­lick Ar­von Caribbean Writ­ers Prize and the Burt Award for writ­ers of lit­er­a­ture for young adults.The short­list for the Bo­cas Prize was an­nounced last week with Kendel Hip­poly­te, Monique Rof­fey and Ru­pert Roop­nar­ine as fi­nal­ists. Four­teen writ­ers have been se­lect­ed as fi­nal­ists for the Hol­lick Ar­von Prize.

A prize will al­so be giv­en to the win­ner of the Vers­es Bo­cas Po­et­ry Slam for per­for­mance po­ets which is the fes­ti­val's fi­nale.In ad­di­tion, the Bo­cas Lit Fest in­cludes read­ings, film screen­ings, work­shops, lec­tures and de­bates. This year's de­bate se­ries will in­clude the Caribbean leg of the Ed­in­burgh World Writ­ers' Con­fer­ence, made pos­si­ble through a part­ner­ship with the Ed­in­burgh Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val and the British Coun­cil.

The Ed­in­burgh World Writ­ers' Con­fer­ence is a trav­el­ling con­fer­ence in 14 coun­tries cov­er­ing five themes. It is streamed live via the In­ter­net. The themes dis­cussed at Bo­cas Lit Fest will in­clude: Should lit­er­a­ture be po­lit­i­cal? and, Is there a na­tion­al lit­er­a­ture?"We are ex­cit­ed about this be­cause it will liken T&T with the rest of the world and raise our pro­file to be known not just as the coun­try of steel­pan, ca­lyp­so and Car­ni­val, but al­so one with a strong lit­er­ary her­itage and a great lit­er­ary fes­ti­val," said Sa­landy-Brown.

More in­fo

Oth­er an­nounce­ments made at the launch:

�2 The Bo­cas Chil­dren's Fes­ti­val starts on April 6 with sto­ry-telling ses­sions na­tion­wide.

�2 The in­tro­duc­tion of the 2013 fes­ti­val artist, Wendy Nanan.

�2 The Bo­cas Lec­ture will fea­ture neu­ro­sci­en­tist Prof Ian Robert­son; and part­ner­ships with the T&T Writ­ers Union.

�2 The Bridge Foun­da­tion

�2 The Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T

�2 The lit­er­ary mag­a­zine Wasafiri.

Bo­cas Lit Fest will al­so work with the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment to pub­lish five books on cul­ture and her­itage with­in the next year.For more in­for­ma­tion about the Bo­cas Lit Fest, you can vis­it their Web site at: www.bo­caslit­fest.com