Charles Kong Soo

Mul­ti­ple-award win­ning T&T au­thor Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj says more gov­ern­ment sup­port is need­ed if the coun­try is to pro­duce pro­lif­ic writ­ers.He was speak­ing to the T&T Guardian af­ter lunchtime read­ings of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine's an­nu­al Cam­pus Lit­er­a­ture Week at the Al­ma Jor­dan Li­brary, yes­ter­day.

Host­ed by the De­part­ment of Lit­er­ary, Cul­tur­al and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, the event start­ed on Mon­day and ends to­mor­row.Stu­dents of the de­part­ment's Mas­ters of Fine Arts (MFA) Cre­ative Writ­ing Pro­gramme, as well as writ­ers from the cam­pus and pub­lic are read­ing from their own works of fic­tion dur­ing lunchtime read­ings from 12 am to 1.30 pm at the Au­dio Vi­su­al Room, third floor, Al­ma Jor­dan Li­brary.

The fi­nale on Sat­ur­day will be the gala read­ing and clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny, when Ma­haraj will read from his award-win­ning nov­el, The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy.Guests will al­so be treat­ed to a read­ing from a short film that Ma­haraj has re­cent­ly com­plet­ed, Crab­man and Sand­bird, and the read­ing will be done by one of its ac­tors, Er­rol Sita­hal.

They will be in­vit­ed to a cock­tail re­cep­tion fol­low­ing the cer­e­mo­ny. This event is slat­ed to start at 7 pm at the Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre (LRC), UWI's St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus.Ma­haraj said: "Fes­ti­vals like the Bo­cas Lit Fes­ti­val and the MFA pro­gramme is a start but it's on­ly a be­gin­ning. I think what has to hap­pen is the au­thor­i­ties, the Gov­ern­ment and per­haps busi­ness peo­ple need to con­tin­ue that jour­ney.

"One of the ways they can do that is by in­sti­tut­ing or en­cour­ag­ing pub­lish­ing hous­es to op­er­ate."In Cana­da, for in­stance, pub­lish­ing hous­es once they pub­lish Cana­di­an ma­te­r­i­al, they get a grant from the gov­ern­ment. If we do that here, I think it will play a big part in fur­ther en­cour­ag­ing lo­cal writ­ers."

Ma­haraj said while hav­ing the MFA pro­gramme and Bo­cas Lit Fes­ti­val were com­mend­able, as they en­cour­aged peo­ple to learn the art and the process of writ­ing, they need­ed to be pub­lished.He said not hav­ing the av­enues to be pub­lished was a tragedy and a waste.Ma­haraj said be­sides gov­ern­ment sup­port and the es­tab­lish­ment of pub­lish­ing hous­es, grants, sub­ven­tions and per­haps more lit­er­ary fes­ti­vals should be made more read­i­ly avail­able to bud­ding writ­ing tal­ent.

He said T&T paid a lot more at­ten­tion and di­vert a lot of re­sources to the more vi­su­al art forms, such as mu­sic.Ma­haraj is writer-in-res­i­dence at the cam­pus, as part of the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion's MFA cre­ative writ­ing pro­gramme. He is the award-win­ning au­thor of eight books, in­clud­ing five nov­els. His lat­est nov­el, The Amaz­ing Ab­sorb­ing Boy, won both the Tril­li­um Fic­tion Award and the City of Toron­to Book Award.

Re­cent­ly, this nov­el has al­so been op­tioned for film adap­ta­tion. He was born and raised in Trinidad and em­i­grat­ed to Cana­da in the ear­ly 1990s, where he has re­ceived nu­mer­ous awards for his writ­ing, in­clud­ing the Queen Eliz­a­beth II Di­a­mond Ju­bilee Medal, which ho­n­ours sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions and achieve­ments by Cana­di­ans. In 2012, Ma­haraj re­ceived a Nalis Life­time Lit­er­ary Award as part of the com­mem­o­ra­tion of T&T's 50th in­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary.

Shiv­an­nee Ram­lochan, Rhon­da Har­ri­son, An­na Levi, Shari Paul, Ann Sec­ond, Jay Bon­ny King and Omega Fran­cis read from their works yes­ter­day.UWI's St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus' lit­er­a­ture week has been held al­most every year since 2003 and has fea­tured, in ad­di­tion to read­ings by var­i­ous spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests and MFA stu­dents, writ­ers Olive Se­nior, Shani Mootoo, Earl Lovelace and Lawrence Scott.

LunchtimeRead­ings to­day:

�2 Bar­bara Lal­la

�2 Shan­ti Charles

�2 Sher­win Thomas

�2 Por­tia Sub­ran

�2 Kevin Ho­sein

�2 John Ha­gley

�2 Chadd Cum­ber­batch