T&T's lit­er­ary fes­ti­val heads South next week­end for the NGC Bo­cas South Cen­tral event.Every April for the past three years, dur­ing the an­nu­al NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, Port-of-Spain be­comes the heart of Caribbean lit­er­a­ture. The Na­tion­al Li­brary and the Old Fire Sta­tion are trans­formed in­to a fes­ti­val plaza, buzzing with read­ers, book­sellers, great writ­ers, soon-to-be great writ­ers, fa­mous po­ets and spo­ken word artistes, all par­tic­i­pants in the Bo­cas project to en­er­gise and pro­mote re­gion­al writ­ing.

Next Sat­ur­day and Sun­day, be­gin­ning in San Fer­nan­do, where 90 years ago the lit­er­ary pi­o­neer Samuel Selvon was born, and end­ing in Ch­agua­nas, the birth­place of VS Naipaul's leg­endary Mr Biswas, the in­au­gur­al NGC Bo­cas South Cen­tral will fea­ture a di­verse col­lec­tion of read­ings by tal­ent­ed lo­cal writ­ers.

T&T Sun­day Guardian colum­nist An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh will host these read­ings in two book­shops: RIK Ser­vices Ltd in Gulf City Mall, La Ro­maine, and Nigel R Khan Book­sellers in Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas. Light re­fresh­ments will be served.Start­ing at 10.15 am, the open­ing event at RIK pays trib­ute to the di­ver­si­ty and rich lit­er­ary her­itage of south Trinidad in a se­ries of read­ings from clas­sic lit­er­a­ture, with guest read­ing by film and stage ac­tress Su­san Han­nays-Abra­ham.

Some of the coun­try's best spo­ken word artists from the pop­u­lar 2 Cents Move­ment will en­liv­en the Gulf City Mall atri­um with a heat­ed lunchtime jam ses­sion be­fore the pro­gramme moves to its af­ter­noon venue, Nigel R Khan Book­sellers in Mid Cen­tre Mall at 3 pm.

There, the fi­nale will fea­ture the work of our own No­bel Lau­re­ate, read by his sis­ter Savi Naipaul Akal, and Prof Ken Ram­c­hand will read from Sam Selvon. A show­case of new, up­com­ing lo­cal po­ets, in­clud­ing the T&T Guardian's Sun­day Arts Sec­tion writer Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan, is al­so on the bill.Well known writ­ers such as Earl Lovelace and Michael An­tho­ny will share the stage with the fu­ture stars of lo­cal lit­er­a­ture, the likes of 2013 Com­mon­wealth Prize win­ner Sharon Mil­lar, Vashti Bowlah, K Jared Ho­sein and many more.

All read­ings are free and open to the pub­lic, and the writ­ers will be avail­able to an­swer au­di­ence ques­tions and sign books.The sec­ond day of Bo­cas South Cen­tral on No­vem­ber 17, will fo­cus on emerg­ing writ­ing tal­ent with a se­ries of writ­ing work­shops in fic­tion, as well as a life writ­ing/ non-fic­tion with T&T Guardian ed­i­tor-in-chief Judy Ray­mond.There will al­so be a fic­tion-writ­ing work­shop specif­i­cal­ly for young as­pir­ing writ­ers aged 14 to 17 with the T&T Guardian's Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni.

All work­shops will be held at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts in col­lab­o­ra­tion with UTT. The South Cen­tral lit­er­ary fes­ti­val is spon­sored by NGC.

To view the fes­ti­val pro­gramme and to reg­is­ter for writ­ing work­shops vis­it www.bo­caslit­fest.com, e-mail in­fo@bo­caslit­fest.com or phone 222-7099.