Bo­bie-Lee Dixon

In these tough eco­nom­ic times, the an­nu­al Bo­cas Lit Fest has man­aged to re­tain all of its ma­jor spon­sors. Those spon­sors–NGC, OCM, First Cit­i­zens and the Min­istry of Plan­ning–pledged their con­tin­u­ing sup­port for the na­tion­al lit­er­ary fes­ti­val at last Wednes­day's launch which took place at the Na­tion­al Li­brary (Nalis) in Port-of-Spain. Founder and di­rec­tor Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown and her team have al­so been able to forge clos­er ties with the Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries and for the first time, there will be CineLit, a pro­gramme of films based on Latin Amer­i­can books.

Chilean am­bas­sador Fer­nan­do Schmidt, was al­so present at the launch and spoke of how elat­ed he was to have such films in­clud­ed in the lit­er­ary fes­ti­val. He said all the Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries with em­bassies in T&T have con­tributed films to the event.

"Di­a­logue be­tween lan­guages is so im­por­tant. We hope that through these films, we will make a step for­ward in forg­ing clos­er ties be­tween the Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries and the Caribbean," said Schmidt.

Sa­landy-Brown ex­plained that with the ad­di­tion of CineLit, this year's fes­ti­val will be ex­tend­ed from five to nine days. CineLit starts on April 23 and runs for the du­ra­tion of the fes­ti­val. The tra­di­tion­al el­e­ments of the fes­ti­val–read­ings, work­shops, sa­lons as well as cul­tur­al events–be­gin on April 27 and cul­mi­nates on May 1.

The fes­ti­val which takes place at Nalis, al­so pays homage to the 400th an­niver­saries of the deaths of renowned Eng­lish and Span­ish writ­ers Miguel de Cer­vantes and William Shake­speare. There will be a spe­cial Shake­speare­an open mic where peo­ple can read their own son­nets in­spired by Shake­speare­an sto­ries or themes, and there will be a prize for the win­ner.

She ex­plained the fes­ti­val had been grow­ing since it be­gan in 2011 and as a re­sult more el­e­ments are be­ing added. There are near­ly 100 events oc­cur­ring with­in the fes­ti­val. There will be a num­ber of pan­el dis­cus­sions as well as work­shops about spe­cial­ist or niche writ­ing in­clud­ing po­et­ry, fic­tion, crime and short sto­ries.

"The fes­ti­val pro­gramme has six cor­ner­stones–au­thors' read­ings and con­ver­sa­tions; lit­er­ary and non-lit­er­ary pan­el dis­cus­sions; film screen­ings; prizes; and per­for­mances. But in­clud­ed too are book­sellers and book sign­ings and we al­so try to keep the oral tra­di­tion alive, which is what our name Bo­cas de­rived from," said Sa­landy-Brown.

The tra­di­tion­al as­pects of Bo­cas Lit Fest will kick off with read­ings from an ar­ray of new books by lo­cal au­thors. One such au­thor is for­mer T&T Guardian Ed­i­tor-in-Chief, Judy Ray­mond who will be in­tro­duc­ing her third book.

In the com­ing weeks, the short­lists for the 2016 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean lit­er­a­ture and CODE's Burt Award for Caribbean lit­er­a­ture, recog­nis­ing Caribbean writ­ers of young adult lit­er­a­ture will be re­leased and the win­ners will be an­nounced at the fes­ti­val. The Hen­ry Swanzy Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice to Caribbean Let­ters, an an­nu­al life­time achieve­ment award recog­nis­ing ser­vice to Caribbean lit­er­a­ture by ed­i­tors, pub­lish­ers, crit­ics and broad­cast­ers, will be be­stowed on Je­re­my Poynt­ing, founder of Peepal Tree Press.

An in­creas­ing­ly pop­u­lar el­e­ment of Bo­cas is the First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam. It is the fi­nal event of the fes­ti­val cal­en­dar and will fea­ture the best spo­ken word per­form­ers in the coun­try. This year's fi­nal takes place at Globe Cin­e­ma, Park Street, Port-of-Spain.

The NGC Bo­cas Chil­dren's Lit Fest is a car­a­van which starts on April 1, in To­ba­go and goes to var­i­ous parts of the coun­try. It will be based at the Chil­dren's Li­brary at Nalis for the fes­ti­val.

There will al­so be satel­lite evening events at venues around the city, in­clud­ing a spe­cial day of events for adults and chil­dren on April 27 at the Queen's Park Oval as it cel­e­brates the 125th an­niver­sary of the Queen's Park Crick­et Club.

On April 28, there will be a trib­ute to ca­lyp­son­ian the Mighty Spar­row on the 60th an­niver­sary of his cel­e­brate clas­sic Jean and Di­nah.

�2 For in­for­ma­tion about all oth­er events hap­pen­ing at the Bo­cas Lit Fest, vis­it the web­site at bo­caslit­fest.com.