Col­in Robin­son

In in­tro­duc­tions our first day, an­oth­er stu­dent in my UWI cre­ative writ­ing pro­gramme shared his goal–write a book that gets on the CXC syl­labus. For a Caribbean writer, is there any greater am­bi­tion? Who else reads Caribbean lit­er­a­ture? A pro­mo­tion­al fly­er for a Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press Caribbean an­thol­o­gy I'm in, re­leased that same year, list­ed ship­ping rates for the US, Cana­da and Eu­rope; not the Caribbean.

Who is read­ing Caribbean books? A sur­vey by the Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture Ac­tion Group (a two-year-old ini­tia­tive among writ­ers, pub­lish­ers, lit­er­ary fes­ti­vals and aca­d­e­m­ic lit­er­a­ture pro­grammes) is ask­ing. You can com­plete it at: www.cari­b­lit.org/sur­vey.html, and learn about the state of Caribbean writ­ing and pub­lish­ing brows­ing the Cari­b­Lit blog.

Who is read­ing at all? One of the smartest home­grown NGOs I've en­coun­tered is Al­ta, the 22-year-old Adult Lit­er­a­cy Tu­tors As­so­ci­a­tion. With branch­es at the Ari­ma PTSC mall and St Paul's An­gli­can cathe­dral on Har­ris Prom­e­nade, Al­ta's head­quar­ters is part of a grow­ing non­prof­it com­mu­ni­ty in Bel­mont.

Its mis­sion to strength­en na­tion­al lit­er­a­cy and core pro­gramme year-round class­es for those 16+, Al­ta com­bines a strong vol­un­teer com­po­nent, vi­sion­ary lead­er­ship, pub­lic�pri­vate part­ner­ships, and a com­mit­ment to ac­count­abil­i­ty and as­sess­ment.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers