Bo­cas Lit Fest, the em­bod­i­ment of Caribbean vi­bran­cy, en­er­gy and cre­ativ­i­ty, along with its founder, Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, was cel­e­brat­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum (IWF) in the “Ideas Re­mak­ing the World” seg­ment of its World Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence on No­vem­ber 4 and 5.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum is a glob­al or­gan­i­sa­tion whose man­date is the ad­vance­ment of women’s lead­er­ship and the cham­pi­oning of equal­i­ty world­wide. IWF op­er­ates in 33 coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T, with a mem­ber­ship of over 7,500 pre-em­i­nent women lead­ers across the globe.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Fo­rum Trinidad and To­ba­go (IWFTT), of which Sa­landy-Brown is a mem­ber, nom­i­nat­ed her and Bo­cas Lit Fest for the pres­ti­gious award ear­li­er this year. “Ideas Re­mak­ing the World” is one of IWF’s flag­ship pro­grammes, and the Sa­landy-Brown/Bo­cas Lit Fest nom­i­na­tion was the T&T Fo­rum’s first to this pro­gramme.

More than 25 en­tries were sub­mit­ted to the “Ideas Re­mak­ing the World,” rep­re­sent­ing ini­tia­tives in dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, sci­ence, en­tre­pre­neur­ship, and the arts, among oth­er cat­e­gories. Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown’s Bo­cas Lit Fest was one of just three from among the many in­no­v­a­tive ideas sub­mit­ted, to be se­lect­ed by the pan­el of judges. The oth­er two se­lect­ed idea gen­er­a­tors were Jen­sine Larsen from Ore­gon (Glob­al Women’s Dig­i­tal Rev­o­lu­tion) and Nanette Archer Sven­son of Pana­ma (Mo­bile Lit­er­a­cy: What­sApp Re­mote Read­ing).

The three cho­sen ideas re­mak­ing the world were shared by their founders in pre­sen­ta­tions at the 2021 IWF World Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence and Gala.

The Bo­cas Lit Fest was found­ed in 2010 and is best known for pro­duc­ing T&T’s sig­na­ture an­nu­al lit­er­ary fes­ti­val, the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, which cel­e­brates books, writ­ers, writ­ing and ideas with a Caribbean fo­cus and in­ter­na­tion­al scope. The fes­ti­val brings to­geth­er read­ers and writ­ers from T&T, the wider Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for read­ings, per­for­mances, spo­ken word, work­shops, dis­cus­sions and film screen­ings, among oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties.

Cel­e­brat­ing cur­rent as well as fu­ture lit­er­ary lu­mi­nar­ies, the Fes­ti­val al­so in­cludes a full pro­gramme of ac­tiv­i­ties for young read­ers and writ­ers in its par­al­lel chil­dren’s fes­ti­val as well as a pop­u­lar, month-long sto­ry­telling car­a­van that goes around T&T in the lead up to the Fes­ti­val.

In ad­di­tion to be­ing the founder of Bo­cas Lit Fest, a non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion, Sa­landy-Brown is al­so its vice pres­i­dent and Fes­ti­val Di­rec­tor. In the last ten years of its ex­is­tence, Bo­cas Lit Fest ac­cu­mu­lat­ed many achieve­ments, fore­most among them the pub­li­ca­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of nine ful­ly il­lus­trat­ed chil­dren’s sto­ry telling books fea­tur­ing 155 sto­ries cre­at­ed by chil­dren; host­ing 831 dif­fer­ent events with 750 Caribbean writ­ers; de­liv­er­ing 72 work­shops and mas­ter class­es in T&T, Ja­maica, Guyana and St. Lu­cia; and en­gag­ing over 150,000 stu­dents in more than 250 sec­ondary schools, in a na­tion­wide spo­ken word tour, along with the 2Cents Move­ment. Its con­tin­u­ous vir­tu­al events dur­ing 2021, in­clud­ing the First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam and an ar­ray of new projects, aim to build ca­pac­i­ty at all lev­els of the lit­er­ary sec­tor, start­ing with the young, in and out of school.

The Fes­ti­val has re­ceived nu­mer­ous ku­dos over the years, in­clud­ing be­ing cho­sen as one of the Top 20 in the world, and the ac­com­plish­ments of the Bo­cas Lit Fest have ex­tend­ed be­yond the eu­phor­ic charm of the an­nu­al fes­ti­val events, in­to tan­gi­ble spaces where op­por­tu­ni­ties are cre­at­ed for Caribbean writ­ers to present and pub­lish their work, as well as meet and net­work with their peers from the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, South Amer­i­ca, Unit­ed King­dom, Africa, In­dia, Asia and the Pa­cif­ic re­gions. It has lit­er­al­ly opened the world to Caribbean writ­ers.

Sa­landy-Brown’s en­thu­si­asm and pas­sion for the work of the Bo­cas Lit Fest are leg­endary. And it is this pas­sion that has dri­ven her and her team to ex­tend be­yond the an­nu­al fes­ti­val, in­to a year long litany of ac­tiv­i­ties com­pris­ing Bios and Book­marks, a Sun­day one-hour-long chat with lead­ing Caribbean au­thors res­i­dent around the world; month­ly writ­ing work­shops on po­et­ry, fic­tion and lit­er­ary non-fic­tion; Sur­vival Kit, a se­ries of month­ly art, mu­sic and lit­er­a­ture of­fer­ings; a month­ly bul­letin of lit­er­ary news, a pub­lish­ing con­sul­tan­cy pro­vid­ing ad­vice on edit­ing and com­mer­cial pub­lish­ing; and Bring your Own Book and Bot­tle, which is a month­ly, on­line in­ter­na­tion­al chat-in about books with the Bo­cas’ book net­work; Peekash Press, to pub­lish new Caribbean writ­ing; Friends of Bo­cas, of­fer­ing read­ers ac­cess to a rich world of at­trac­tive of­fers, plus sev­er­al ad hoc events.

Where to next for Sa­landy Brown and the Bo­cas Lit Fest? The sky is the lim­it.