The St. Augustine Campus is congratulating Professor Emeritus Funso Aiyejina and Dr Merle Hodge on being awarded the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters.
According to this release, Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge have played an unmistakable role in shaping the region’s literary landscape” with bodies of work that span borders and decades. They have been creative writing teachers and mentors, particularly through the influential Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop which they led from its foundation in 2000.
Details follow in this release from the UWI:
The St. Augustine Campus Community congratulates Professor Emeritus Funso Aiyejina and Dr Merle Hodge on being awarded the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters. The award was founded in 2013 to honour the late BBC World Service radio producer Henry Swanzy who was a catalyzing figure in the development of modern West Indian literature.
According to the Bocas Lit Fest Committee, “Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge have played an unmistakable role in shaping the region’s literary landscape” with bodies of work that span borders and decades. They have been creative writing teachers and mentors, particularly through the influential Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop which they led from its foundation in 2000. Bocas lit commends their “crucial parallel work as teachers and mentors of younger authors, and their dedication to nurturing a generation of writers grounded in Caribbean literary tradition and language, exploring the region’s social complexities.”
In addition, Professor Emeritus Aijyejina was instrumental in the establishment of the creative writing MFA (Master of Fine Arts) programme at the St. Augustine Campus – the first degree-granting programme in creative writing in the Anglophone Caribbean. Dr Merle Hodge is the author of the 1970 classic Crick Crack, Monkey. She is a retired lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, St. Augustine Campus.
Head of Department, Literary, Cultural & Communication Studies, Dr Suzanne Burke said, the department joins the national community in recognising the work of both Professor Funso Aiyegina and Dr Merle Hodge in creating art that represents the diversity and dynamism of the Caribbean experience. “Their work has provided us with new and fresh ways to see and to be ourselves. As public intellectuals and activists their years of service, especially with young men and women have consistently sought to activate the innate potential of the region’s creative core as a source of real developmental energy. We congratulate them both on their accomplishments,” she added.
Other UWI St. Augustine lecturers have previously received this award – Professors Kenneth Ramchand and Gordon Rohlehr, both in 2014.
The Bocas Henry Swanzy Award will be formally presented to Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge during a virtual ceremony on Saturday 30 April as part of the 2022 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.