IRA MATH­UR

“Our writ­ers, at home in the Caribbean and scat­tered through­out the di­as­po­ra, pro­voke us with their ques­tions, ar­gu­ments, and hard-won in­sights. They com­pel us to think about who we are, where we came from, where we are go­ing, our time and place, and our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to each oth­er. At a time when the world is racked by con­flict—from Haiti on our doorstep to Gaza halfway across the globe—and jus­tice seems an ever-more elu­sive goal, our writ­ers push us to ac­tive en­gage­ment.

“For the past 14 years, the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, the largest lit­er­ary gath­er­ing in the An­glo­phone Caribbean, has cel­e­brat­ed Caribbean writ­ers’ imag­i­na­tive and in­tel­lec­tu­al pow­er, the en­er­gy and di­ver­si­ty of their voic­es and ideas, as they in­spire and en­ter­tain us. Caribbean lit­er­a­ture, emerg­ing from a fraught and rich his­tor­i­cal and so­cial con­text, is glob­al in scope, am­bi­tions, and achieve­ments, and the line-up of writ­ers and books at this year’s fes­ti­val proves that.”

- Nicholas Laugh­lin,

Fes­ti­val and Pro­gramme di­rec­tor, Bo­cas Lit Fest.

This Sun­day is the fourth and fi­nal day of 2024 NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, which has lit up Port-of-Spain with ideas, crack­ing con­ver­sa­tions and ses­sions with a jam-packed lit­er­ary ex­trav­a­gan­za fea­tur­ing over 150 spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed au­thors and per­form­ers at NALIS, Port-of-Spain.

Fes­ti­val and Pro­gramme di­rec­tor of Bo­cas Lit Fest, Nicholas Laugh­lin, shares some of his top events to­day fea­tur­ing Caribbean women’s writ­ing.

Christi­na Sharpe 

Lat­est book: Or­di­nary Notes, Best Book of 2023 by The New York Times, NPR, New York Mag­a­zine, Kirkus, and Barnes and No­ble, and the win­ner of the 2024 Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize.

About Or­di­nary Notes from the pub­lish­er (Far­rar, Straus and Giroux): “A sin­gu­lar achieve­ment, Or­di­nary Notes ex­plores pro­found ques­tions about loss and the shapes of Black life that emerge in the wake. In a se­ries of 248 notes that gath­er mean­ing as we read them, Christi­na Sharpe skil­ful­ly weaves arte­facts from the past—pub­lic ones along­side oth­ers that are poignant­ly per­son­al—with present re­al­i­ties and pos­si­ble fu­tures, in­tri­cate­ly con­struct­ing an im­mer­sive por­trait of every­day Black ex­is­tence. 

About the writer: Christi­na Sharpe is a writer, Pro­fes­sor, and Cana­da Re­search Chair in Black Stud­ies in the Hu­man­i­ties at York Uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to. She is the au­thor of In the Wake: On Black­ness, Be­ing and Mon­strous In­ti­ma­cies: Mak­ing Post-Slav­ery Sub­jects, and, most re­cent­ly, Or­di­nary Notes, Win­ner of the 2023 Hi­lary We­st­on Writ­ers’ Trust Prize for Non­fic­tion and Fi­nal­ist for the 2023 Na­tion­al Book Award in Non­fic­tion. She is cur­rent­ly work­ing on a mono­graph called Black. Still. Life. (Duke 2025). 2024 Adult’s Fes­ti­val Par­tic­i­pant, 2024 Fea­tured Speak­er.

Event: One-on-one 1-2 pm In con­ver­sa­tion with Gabrielle Ho­sein • Old Fire Sta­tion.

Can­isia Lu­brin 

New book: Code Noir. A past win­ner of the OCM Bo­cas Prize for The Dyz­graphxst.

About the writer: Can­isia Lu­brin is a St. Lu­cia-born po­et and win­ner writer, ed­i­tor, teacher and crit­ic. Fre­quent­ly an­thol­o­gised, her work has been trans­lat­ed in­to Span­ish and Ital­ian. Lu­brin is al­so the au­thor of the awards-nom­i­nat­ed po­et­ry col­lec­tion Voodoo Hy­poth­e­sis. She teach­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and will join Pen­guin Ran­dom House as an ed­i­tor.

About The Dyz­graphxst: This book won the 2021 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture and was short­list­ed for Cana­da’s Grif­fin Po­et­ry Prize. In March 2021, Lu­brin was named a  2021 Wind­ham Camp­bell Prize win­ner.

From the Pub­lish­er (Pen­guin Ran­dom House, Cana­da): “Code Noir is a ground­break­ing, daz­zling de­but fic­tion from one of Cana­da’s most ex­cit­ing and ad­mired writ­ers. Can­isia Lu­brin’s de­but fic­tion is that rare work of art—a bril­liant, star­tling­ly orig­i­nal book that com­bines im­mense lit­er­ary and po­lit­i­cal force. Its struc­ture is de­cep­tive­ly sim­ple: it de­parts from the in­fa­mous re­al-life “Code Noir,” a set of his­tor­i­cal de­crees ini­tial­ly passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defin­ing the con­di­tions of slav­ery in the French colo­nial em­pire. The orig­i­nal Code had fifty-nine ar­ti­cles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fic­tions—vivid, un­for­get­table, mul­ti-lay­ered frag­ments filled with globe-wise char­ac­ters who de­sire to live be­yond the ru­ins of the past.

Nicole Sealey

Lat­est book: The Fer­gu­son Re­port: An Era­sure, win­ner of the 2024 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Po­et­ry. 

About the writer: Nicole Sealey was born in St Thomas, USVI, and raised in Apop­ka, Flori­da. She is the au­thor of The Fer­gu­son Re­port: An Era­sure, longlist­ed for the 2024 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture. Her work has ap­peared in var­i­ous jour­nals and an­tholo­gies, in­clud­ing The New York­er, Po­et­ry Lon­don, and The Best Amer­i­can Po­et­ry (2018 and 2021). She teach­es in the MFA Writ­ers Work­shop in Paris pro­gramme at New York Uni­ver­si­ty.

From the Pub­lish­er:  (Pen­guin Ran­dom House) In Au­gust 2014, Michael Brown—a young, un­armed Black man—was shot to death by a po­lice of­fi­cer in Fer­gu­son, Mis­souri. What fol­lowed was a pe­ri­od of protests and tur­moil, cul­mi­nat­ing in an ex­ten­sive re­port filed by the De­part­ment of Jus­tice de­tail­ing bi­ased polic­ing and court prac­tices in the city. It is a doc­u­ment that ex­pos­es the racist poli­cies and pro­ce­dures that have be­come com­mon­place—from dis­pro­por­tion­ate ar­rest rates to fla­grant vi­o­lence di­rect­ed at the Black com­mu­ni­ty. It is a re­port that re­mains as dis­heart­en­ing as it is damn­ing.

Award-win­ning po­et Nicole Sealey re­vis­its the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in a book that redacts the re­port, an act of era­sure that reimag­ines the orig­i­nal text as it strips it away. Il­lu­mi­nat­ing what it means to live in this fright­en­ing age and what it means to bear wit­ness, The Fer­gu­son Re­port: An Era­sure is an en­gross­ing med­i­ta­tion on one of the most im­por­tant texts of our time.

Event: TAKE TWO Can­isia Lu­brin and Nicole Sealey in con­ver­sa­tion with Michael A. Buc­knor 2-3 pm • Old Fire Sta­tion, NALIS, Port-of-Spain.

Myr­i­am J.A. Chancy

About the writer: Myr­i­am J. A. Chancy, born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised there and in Cana­da, is a 2014 Guggen­heim Fel­low who cur­rent­ly holds the Hart­ley Burr Alexan­der Chair in the Hu­man­i­ties at Scripps Col­lege, Cal­i­for­nia. She is the au­thor of four books of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism and four nov­els.

New book: Vil­lage Weavers; pre­vi­ous book, Har­vest­ing Haiti (re­flect­ing on Nat­ur­al Dis­as­ters longlist­ed for the 2024 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, Bo­cas Lit Fest.

 From The Pub­lish­er: (The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas Press) Har­vest­ing Haiti, pon­ders the per­son­al and po­lit­i­cal im­pli­ca­tions for Haitians at home and abroad re­sult­ing from the dev­as­tat­ing 2010 earth­quake.

The 7.0 mag­ni­tude earth­quake that struck Haiti in Jan­u­ary 2010 was a de­bil­i­tat­ing event that fol­lowed decades of po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, and fi­nan­cial is­sues. Leav­ing over 250,000 peo­ple dead, 300,000 in­jured, and 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple home­less, the earth­quake has had last­ing reper­cus­sions on a strug­gling na­tion. As the post-earth­quake po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion un­fold­ed, Myr­i­am Chancy worked to il­lu­mi­nate on-the-ground con­cerns, from the vul­ner­a­ble po­si­tion of Hait­ian women to the fail­ures of in­ter­na­tion­al aid. Pre­sent­ed ini­tial­ly at in­vit­ed cam­pus talks, pub­lished as columns for a news­pa­per in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and cir­cu­lat­ed in oth­er ways, her es­says and cre­ative re­spons­es pre­serve the re­ac­tions and ur­gen­cies of the years fol­low­ing the dis­as­ter.

Bar­bara Lal­la 

About the writer: Nov­el­ist Bar­bara Lal­la is Pro­fes­sor Emeri­ta, Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine. She is the au­thor of five nov­els, in­clud­ing By Such a Part­ing Light, pub­lished in 2024. Her nu­mer­ous schol­ar­ly works in­clude Post­colo­nialisms: Caribbean Reread­ing of Me­dieval Eng­lish Dis­course, Defin­ing Ja­maican Fic­tion: Ma­tron­age and the Dis­course of Sur­vival, and the co-au­thored Lan­guage in Ex­ile: Three Hun­dred Years of Ja­maican Cre­ole, Voic­es in Ex­ile: Ja­maican Texts of the Eigh­teenth and Nine­teenth Cen­turies, and Caribbean Lit­er­ary Dis­course: Voice and Cul­tur­al Iden­ti­ty in the An­glo­phone Caribbean.

New book: By Such a Part­ing Light.

About Such a Part­ing Light by the Pub­lish­er (Bayshore Books LLC): “Dis­as­ter cat­a­pults three chil­dren in­to the care of their Caribbean grand­par­ents be­fore an­oth­er rel­a­tive, elu­sive and per­haps un­sta­ble, makes a con­flict­ing claim to guardian­ship. Bal­anc­ing do­mes­tic calami­ty against her own com­pul­sive writ­ing, Aria faces phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal threats as a pan­dem­ic creeps up on the world and the coun­try moves in­to lock­down. Such a Part­ing Light of­fers a hu­mor­ous and poignant tale of age­ing and com­ing of age, and it takes a mis­chie­vous ap­proach to the mul­ti­ple. Its re­al­ism blends seam­less­ly in­to strains of the mar­vel­lous and goth­ic - the nov­el’s themes of loss and sep­a­ra­tion, love and re­silience, are uni­ver­sal­ly ap­peal­ing. The book per­son­alis­es lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al vi­o­lence and ter­ror by bring­ing it all home to a small coun­try in an in­ter­na­tion­al con­text of un­con­tained in­fec­tion and cat­a­stroph­ic pol­i­tics. Turn­ing an as­ton­ished eye on de­vel­oped na­tions from the frail shel­ter of a tiny is­land, the tale un­veils al­ter­na­tive no­tions of civil­i­sa­tion and en­light­en­ment.

Event: TAKE TWO The bonds of fam­i­ly — and the very de­f­i­n­i­tion of “fam­i­ly” — are at the heart of new nov­els by Myr­i­am J.A. Chancy (Vil­lage Weavers) and Bar­bara Lal­la (By Such a Part­ing Light). They read from and dis­cuss their books in con­ver­sa­tion with Alake Pil­grim 3.30-4.30 pm • AV Room, Na­tion­al Li­brary

Com­plete pro­gramme of events for Bo­cas Lit Fest:: https://www.bo­caslit­fest.com/fes­ti­val/pro­gramme/

Ira Math­ur is a Guardian jour­nal­ist and the win­ner of the 2023 NGC Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion for her mem­oir, Love The Dark Days. 

Web­site: www.iras­room.org

In­quiries by au­thors can be sent to iras­room@gmail.com