Caribbean writ­ers in­clud­ingSt Lu­cian born Derek Wal­cott and T&T's VS Naipaul have shone on the glob­al stage.Once more, two lo­cal writ­ers have flown the red, white and black proud­ly. They are Trinidad-born writer, Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj and Dr Ma­ri­na Ama Omowale Maxwell.

Ma­haraj has won this year's pres­ti­gious $20,000 Eng­lish-lan­guage Tril­li­um book award.Maxwell made it in­to Wikipedia and the pres­ti­gious list of 400 on­ly women writ­ers in Con­tem­po­rary Women Writ­ers.Ma­haraj, who lives in Ajax, On­tario, nabbed the ho­n­our over a week ago for his im­mi­grant tale The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy.Jeff Latosik of Toron­to won the $10,000 Tril­li­um Book Award for Eng­lish-lan­guage po­et­ry for Tiny, Fran­tic, Stronger.The On­tario gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished the Tril­li­um Book Award in 1987.

This year it al­so hand­ed out a $20,000 prize for best French-lan­guage book (Mon­tre­al na­tive Es­telle Beauchamp won for Un souf­fle venu de loin) and a $10,000 award for chil­dren's lit­er­a­ture in French-lan­guage. The win­ner was Daniel Marchildon of Pene­tan­guishene, On­tario for La pre­miere guerre de Toron­to.Pre­vi­ous win­ners of the Tril­li­um Book Award in­clude Mar­garet At­wood, Wayson Choy, Al­ice Munro and Michael On­daat­je.Pub­lish­ers of the win­ning books each re­ceive $2,500 to­wards their pro­mo­tion­al costs.

Dr Ma­ri­na AmaO­mowale Maxwell

Lo­cal writer Dr Ma­ri­na Ama Omowale Maxwell has made it in­to Wikipedia. A Google search said: "She was born Ma­ri­na Archibald Crichlow in San Fer­nan­do, Trinidad. She gained a BA and MSc (So­ci­ol­o­gy) and an MA at Michi­gan State."

Apart from be­ing a pub­lished writer, po­et, jour­nal­ist and lec­tur­er in Cre­ative Writ­ing and a TV pro­duc­er, Maxwell found­ed the Writ­ers' Union of T&T in 1980. Quot­ing Maxwell, a re­lease said: "It is a sig­nal ho­n­our to be list­ed on these two lo­ca­tions (400 on­ly women writ­ers). I hope it will en­cour­age writ­ers, es­pe­cial­ly women to keep on be­liev­ing in and work­ing on their cre­ativ­i­ty."She shares the view "for­eign me­dia and video games are our crime schools."She is due to launch her next nov­el The 8th Oc­tave, an eco-po­lit­i­cal book in the mag­i­cal re­al­ism mode lat­er this year.

In­flu­ence of Mag­i­cal Re­al­ism

Maxwell of­ten em­ploys the tech­nique of mag­i­cal re­al­ism in her work such as Chop­stix in Mau­by. It was al­so adopt­ed by Colom­bian No­bel Prize win­ner Gabriel Mar­quez-who is renowned for Love In the Time of Cholera.Mag­i­cal re­al­ism is an aes­thet­ic style or genre of fic­tion in which mag­i­cal el­e­ments blend with the re­al world. The sto­ry ex­plains these mag­i­cal el­e­ments as re­al oc­cur­rences, pre­sent­ed in a straight­for­ward man­ner that places the "re­al" and the "fan­tas­tic" in the same stream of thought.

Chop­stix in Mau­by is set in the Or­isha com­pounds and 1970 Re­bel­lion of Trinidad. Her book of po­et­ry Decades To Ama, which she la­belled "bio-po­et­ry", is a deeply per­son­al jour­ney by a woman who is an el­e­men­tal force in Caribbean writ­ing. The po­ems "of­fer a vi­sion of the Caribbean in which de­struc­tive im­agery and hope of re­gen­er­a­tion hold equal pow­er."

Maxwell's mile­stones

• TV Vi­o­lence Is Killing You emerged from her PhD the­sis re­search and the pro­duc­tion of over 100 lo­cal pro­grammes for TTT;

• She has trained writ­ers in Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and cre­ative work in the north, south and east Trinidad;

• The for­mer Sec­re­tary of Caribbean Artists Move­ment in the UK has been in­stru­men­tal for decades in de­vel­op­ing var­i­ous forms of lit­er­ary writ­ing and the dra­mat­ic and me­dia arts;

• Founder of the Yard The­atre while liv­ing in Ja­maica and in­flu­enced all Caribbean The­atre;

• In­vit­ed to be a Com­mis­sion­er for the Schom­burgh Cen­tre (New York Pub­lic Li­brary) for the Preser­va­tion of Black Cul­ture;

• Cho­sen as one of the two del­e­gates to ACLALS–the Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers' Con­fer­ence held in Ugan­da, Africa;

• Trav­elled to writ­ers' meet­ings in Tan­za­nia, Kenya and Nige­ria;

• Worked as a jour­nal­ist for Ra­dio Ja­maica;

• This odyssey led to the for­ma­tion of the Writ­ers' Union of T&T;

• Pub­li­ca­tion of About Our Own Busi­ness-a slew of ar­ti­cles and in­ter­views-in­clud­ing an in­ter­view with Nige­ria's Chin­ua Achebe-fa­mous for Things Fall Apart;

• A del­e­gate to the Ju­ries of Casa de las Amer­i­c­as in Ha­vana, Cu­ba.

more in­fo

Maxwell to train as­pir­ing writ­ers

She will hold class­es in TV and TV script writ­ing and Cre­ative Writ­ing-this time for women. There are plans for a Writ­ers Re­treat from Ju­ly to Au­gust 2011. De­tails will be re­leased soon.For more in­fo on Maxwell vis­it.www.peepal­treep­ress.com/au­thor -dis­play.asp