Writers’ workshop encourages new Caribbean literary voices
The seventh Caribbean Creative Writers’ Residential Workshop sponsored by The Cropper Foundation and organised in partnership with the Department of Creative and Festival Arts and the Department of Liberal Arts, The University of the West Indies (UWI), St Augustine, will take place from July 8 to 19 in T&T. Ten writers who have not as yet published a novel or collection of short stories, poems or plays, will be chosen from across the Caribbean to join this year’s residential workshops. The 2012 workshop will focus on fiction, playwriting and poetry and will be facilitated by Professor Funso Aiyejina and Dr Merle Hodge at a secluded writing-inducing setting location somewhere in Trinidad.
Support for Caribbean writing is an ongoing programme of The Cropper Foundation that seeks to contribute to the development of the Caribbean, on many levels and in different areas of interest. The writers’ workshop is part of the foundation’s effort to encourage new Caribbean literary voices by providing practical advice on the craft of writing. More than 80 writers from Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Commonwealth of Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, T&T, and the Caribbean diaspora (Canada, USA, France and UK), have competed to take part in these workshops held so far in Grand Riviere and Balanadra on the eastern end of Trinidad’s north coast, on Gasparee Island off Trinidad’s northwest peninsula and in Tobago.
From the participants of this workshop series: Barbara Jenkins (T&T); Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming (Bahamas); and Lenworth Burke (Jamaica) went on to win the Commonwealth Short Story Competition and the Jamaica Observer’s Annual Fiction Award respectively. Ruel Johnson (Guyana) has won the Guyana Literature Prize 2003; Krishna Ramsumair (T&T) has published a number of short stories in local and international journals; Robert Clarke (T&T) received a Trinidad Guardian Writer of the Month award, as well as an EMA 2003 Green Leaf Award for journalism; and Tiphanie Yanique has now published her second book and is an editor with Calabash and Story Quarterly. For this year’s workshop, a maximum of ten participants will be selected from entries only from the Caribbean.
The moderators will be novelist Dr Merle Hodge (Crick, Crack Monkey and For the Life of Laetitia) and poet and short story writer Professor Funso Aiyejina, winner of the 2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa) for The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories. They are both lecturers at UWI, St Augustine, in the Faculty of Humanities and Education. Participants will engage with published authors and professionals from the publishing industry, as well as speakers from a variety of other disciplines including history, culture and political science.
The workshop fee, which includes full vegetarian room and board is US$400 and applicants, 20 years and above, who are Caribbean nationals residing in the Caribbean, are invited to submit application forms and samples of their writing (five pages only) no later than January 25, to the following address: Writers Workshop, Department of Creative & Festival Arts, The University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. Works of prose fiction, playwriting or poetry, either published or unpublished, will be considered for this workshop.
• For application forms and further information, please call Marissa Brooks (868) 645-1955 or 663-2141 at The University of the West Indies, or email: MarissaUWI@gmail.com
For the original report go to http://www.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/wednesday-january-18-2012/writers%E2%80%99-workshop-encourages-new-caribbean-literary-voices
