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Sunday, May 25, 2025

A love for reading leads to guiding role in Writers Guild

by

Ryan Bachoo
28 days ago
20250427

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In Stan­dard Three, Jew­el Greene-George was tak­en to the pub­lic li­brary in Ari­ma by her moth­er. She loved read­ing. She even had a shelf full of books at her home. Yet, noth­ing could pre­pare her for what she was about to ex­pe­ri­ence.

When Greene-George re­ceived her li­brary card, she ex­cit­ed­ly asked, “Is this for re­al? I could come here every Sat­ur­day and bor­row books?” Her moth­er had to ask her to low­er her voice in all the ex­cite­ment.

Per­haps it was prov­i­den­tial. In 2023, Greene-George be­came the pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Writ­ers Guild. Her love for books has stayed with her all her life. She re­called to the Sun­day Guardian’s Women’s Em­pow­er­ment (WE) mag­a­zine last week how her for­ma­tive years were shaped by books.

“My moth­er told me books are the on­ly thing that would keep me qui­et. She said she would put on the TV, es­pe­cial­ly Sesame Street, but the on­ly thing that would work for me was a book. I couldn’t read at that time, but she would give me the en­cy­clopae­dia and the med­ical books, and I would be qui­et for hours,” Greene-George said in an in­ter­view last week.

Her moth­er sus­pect­ed she had an affin­i­ty for books from an ear­ly age be­cause of the care­ful way Greene-George would turn the pages. As she grew in­to a read­er, she would take some fruits, take the ham­mock or go to the back­yard and sit un­der a man­go tree where she spent hours read­ing.

“I felt like that was the time I start­ed com­ing in­to my own as a read­er. I’ve al­ways en­joyed books. I love books. I love the smell of books. I love the pos­ses­sion of books. I feel like this is some­thing mag­i­cal,” Greene-George said.

She moved to To­ba­go in 2016, hav­ing lived in Bar­ba­dos for 11 years be­fore that. Wher­ev­er she went, books went with her. Greene-George would join the T&T Writ­ers Guild “mere­ly to par­tic­i­pate”. The or­gan­i­sa­tion need­ed help with its mar­ket­ing, and so, she took on that task. As time went on, mem­bers of the guild want­ed her to serve in a big­ger way–as pres­i­dent. It was a big ask for some­one who joined the guild with­out the in­ten­tion of hav­ing any roles. Greene-George would an­swer the call.

She would aim to fill a ma­jor void in lo­cal pub­lish­ing while al­so help­ing au­thors find their way in a com­plex book in­dus­try.

She ex­plained, “I came to re­alise we have a very huge gap. A lot of pub­lish­ers fo­cus on help­ing peo­ple write their books, but no­body is go­ing the dis­tance af­ter you’ve writ­ten the book to talk about how to mar­ket the book. I thought that was a space I could help with.”

Greene-George would go on to help scores of peo­ple who had books but couldn’t get them seen. She would do this vol­un­tar­i­ly. How­ev­er, she of­ten came across writ­ers who pre­ferred to let their books take the spot­light rather than them­selves.

But Greene-George would al­so see an­oth­er ma­jor gap in the lo­cal book in­dus­try. Self-pub­lished au­thors didn’t have the re­sources like those who had pub­lish­ers.

She ex­plained, “The guild is hop­ing to fill that gap, be­ing that ma­chine for self-pub­lished au­thors. We want to put on events al­low­ing self-pub­lished au­thors to sell their books, to be vis­i­ble and to par­tic­i­pate in ac­tiv­i­ties where they can be vis­i­ble.”

Greene-George has part­nered with the Lo­gos Hope and held we­bi­na­rs where writ­ers can be part of the con­ver­sa­tion. “We want to pro­vide that op­por­tu­ni­ty for a self-pub­lished au­thor to have that same help that the tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing ma­chines of­fer.”

T&T has a his­to­ry of in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised writ­ers, in­clud­ing Michael An­tho­ny, Samuel Selvon and No­bel lau­re­ate Sir VS Naipaul. While this rais­es the coun­try’s im­age in the writ­ing world, Greene-George said some­times self-pub­lished au­thors can of­ten suf­fer be­cause of it, as they can’t nail down a pub­lish­er.

“We have a very ro­bust his­to­ry and lega­cy of award-win­ning writ­ers, but those are tra­di­tion­al­ly pub­lished writ­ers. If we are hon­est and we look at the dif­fer­ence be­tween the self-pub­lished writ­ers and au­thors who have pub­lish­ers, the di­choto­my is quite large,” she said.

Last Wednes­day, the world marked World Book and Copy­right Day—an oc­ca­sion des­ig­nat­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions Ed­u­ca­tion­al, Sci­en­tif­ic and Cul­tur­al Or­gan­i­sa­tion (UN­ESCO) to cel­e­brate the pow­er of books and the im­por­tance of copy­right. Held on April 23, the date al­so com­mem­o­rates the pass­ing of William Shake­speare and oth­er promi­nent au­thors.

Read­ing is an area Greene-George would like to see more T&T cit­i­zens pay at­ten­tion to. She ex­plained, “We have to fo­cus on lit­er­a­cy. It is easy for a per­son who is lit­er­ate to say we need to read more, but I don’t think we have scratched the sur­face on our lev­el of lit­er­a­cy, and I think that’s one of the key rea­sons why peo­ple aren’t read­ing a lot.”

She said that while many peo­ple can write their names and read them, the coun­try needs to move to a high­er lev­el of lit­er­a­cy—one that in­volves crit­i­cal read­ing, analysing what’s be­ing read, tru­ly un­der­stand­ing it, and ap­ply­ing that un­der­stand­ing.

As pres­i­dent of the Writ­ers Guild, Greene-George will con­tin­ue guid­ing self-pub­lished au­thors through the writ­ing world while al­so reignit­ing a love for read­ing across T&T—es­pe­cial­ly among those who need it most.


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