The sec­ond an­nu­al NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest opened yes­ter­day with read­ings to com­mem­o­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go's 50 years of in­de­pen­dence. Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, ac­tor Al­bert Laveau, Prof Ken­neth Ram­c­hand, ac­tress Ce­cil­ia Salazar and Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie all of­fered read­ings from clas­sic Caribbean lit­er­a­ture, news­pa­per columns and speech­es at the Old Fire Sta­tion in Port-of-Spain. The au­di­ence was treat­ed to pas­sages from VS Naipaul's The Suf­frage of Elvi­ra, Samuel Selvon's The Lone­ly Lon­don­ers, po­et­ry from Derek Wal­cott, a speech by Dr Er­ic Williams first pre­sent­ed at a 1962 youth ral­ly, and a dra­mat­ic read­ing of the satir­i­cal Macaw col­umn pub­lished in the T&T Guardian.

Fes­ti­val founder Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown said the se­lec­tions were meant to set the tone for this year's fes­ti­val, which con­tin­ues at the Na­tion­al Li­brary un­til April 29. Sa­landy-Brown, who host­ed the open­ing, al­so an­nounced that for the du­ra­tion of the fes­ti­val, art­work from the se­ries Books & Stu­pas by Wendy Nanan will be ex­hib­it­ed in the Na­tion­al Li­brary and the Old Fire Sta­tion. Lit Fest or­gan­is­ers have al­so part­nered with the Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers' or­gan­i­sa­tion to ad­dress the prob­lems of the Caribbean pub­lish­ing in­dus­try. Sa­landy-Brown said the Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture Ac­tion Group was launched at a pre-fes­ti­val sem­i­nar on Wednes­day. She said there were twice as many par­tic­i­pants in this year's fes­ti­val and that or­gan­is­ers worked with book­sellers, de­spite ob­sta­cles, to en­sure that every au­thor's work was avail­able to pa­trons and for fes­ti­val book sign­ings.