In a new move to en­er­gise T&T's lit­er­ary scene the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest heads to Ch­agua­nas and San Fer­nan­do on No­vem­ber 16-17.

A pro­gramme of read­ings by some of this coun­try's lit­er­ary lu­mi­nar­ies and per­for­mance po­et­ry by some of the finest ex­po­nents of the pop­u­lar genre which will be pub­lished soon, will take place No­vem­ber 16. How­ev­er, bud­ding writ­ers can book now for cre­ative writ­ing work­shops on No­vem­ber 17.

The four work­shops for emerg­ing writ­ing tal­ent cov­er po­et­ry, fic­tion and life writ­ing/non-fic­tion plus a fic­tion-writ­ing work­shop specif­i­cal­ly for young as­pir­ing writ­ers aged 14 to 17. Work­shops will be led by writ­ers in those gen­res and take place at the South­ern Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT.)

For the past three years in April, dur­ing the an­nu­al NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, Port-of-Spain be­comes the beat­ing heart of Caribbean lit­er­a­ture. One down­town block is trans­formed in­to a colour­ful 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.

Be­gin­ning in San Fer­nan­do, where 90 years ago the lit­er­ary pi­o­neer Samuel Selvon was born, and end­ing in Ch­agua­nas, the home of VS Naipaul's leg­endary Mr Biswas, the in­au­gur­al NGC Bo­cas South Cen­tral will fea­ture a di­verse col­lec­tion of read­ings by lo­cal writ­ers. The de­volved fest will be cen­tred in two lo­cal book­shops–RIK Ser­vices Ltd in Gulf City Mall, La Ro­maine, and Nigel R Khan Book­sellers in Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas.

NGC Bo­cas South Cen­tral or­gan­is­ers say, "we have been at­tract­ing peo­ple from all over the coun­try to the April event and there is al­ways more de­mand than we can meet for the se­ries of work­shops we of­fer. So, it makes per­fect sense for us to pro­vide what peo­ple want, and ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly near­er to many of those who would like to have a chance to im­prove their skills."

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny is sole spon­sor of the event.

To reg­is­ter for writ­ing work­shops vis­it www.bo­caslit­fest.com or e-mail in­fo@bo­caslit­fest.com or tele­phone 625-8328.

?