The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Vir­gin Is­lands con­tin­ues the cel­e­bra­tion of its 50th An­niver­sary with the re­lease of Vol­ume 26 of its in­ter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary gem, The Caribbean Writer, a vol­ume ded­i­cat­ed to na­ture and over­flow­ing with bril­liant writ­ing and art in cel­e­bra­tion of the nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment. Vol­ume 26 boasts of lit­er­ary con­tent which cov­ers a num­ber of gen­res, to in­clude po­et­ry, per­son­al es­says, short sto­ries, and book re­views and is vi­su­al­ly stun­ning as well with cov­er art by Amy Laskin from Ja­maica, which fea­tures a de­tailed paint­ing of a cro­ton set in­to a pris­tine, ver­dant land­scape. It is a land­scape which is a Caribbean icon. "We are pleased to con­tin­ue in the tra­di­tion of ex­cel­lence which both the Uni­ver­si­ty and The Caribbean Writer rep­re­sent with this new vol­ume of the jour­nal," said UVI Pres­i­dent David Hall. "It is this spir­it of ex­cel­lence that has en­sured the suc­cess and vi­tal­i­ty of the jour­nal for so many years."

This vol­ume of The Caribbean Writer is edit­ed by Tre­gen­za A Roach, a lo­cal po­et and au­thor who has been wide­ly pub­lished in the jour­nal and who has served on the Uni­ver­si­ty's Ad­junct Fac­ul­ty since 1999, teach­ing cours­es in writ­ing, the hu­man­i­ties, and pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion law. "It was re­al­ly an ho­n­our and priv­i­lege to have been cho­sen to ed­it this vol­ume," Roach said, re­flect­ing on the ap­prox­i­mate 800 sub­mis­sions which were re­viewed in or­der to se­lect the pieces for fi­nal pub­li­ca­tion. Roach thanked the Jour­nal's ed­i­to­r­i­al board whose mem­bers par­tic­i­pat­ed ac­tive­ly in the par­ing down process and who con­tributed great­ly to this keep­sake pub­li­ca­tion, and as­sis­tant ed­i­tor Quilin Mars for her ded­i­cat­ed ser­vice. The ed­i­to­r­i­al board in­cludes UVI fac­ul­ty mem­bers David Gould and Elaine War­ren Ja­cobs, for­mer fac­ul­ty mem­ber Ru­by Sim­monds Es­sanas­son, and Edgar O Lake, lo­cal po­et and nov­el­ist. "We are pleased that this vol­ume has drawn such an ar­ray of art and lit­er­a­ture from across the Caribbean di­as­po­ra-from lit­er­al­ly every place where Caribbean peo­ple and their de­scen­dants have lived or set­tled," Roach added.

The is­sue al­so ad­dress­es the area of lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, fea­tur­ing two spe­cial sec­tions: Ecowom­an­ist Gar­dens in the New World by Deb­bie-Ann Mor­ri­son and So Who Is a Caribbean Writer and Oth­er Ques­tions; a sec­tion which draws on the thoughts and opin­ions of a note­wor­thy pool of peo­ple who of­fer their spe­cial in­sights. The sec­tion is edit­ed by The Caribbean Writer's found­ing ed­i­tor Eri­ka J Wa­ters. Of the spe­cial vol­ume ded­i­cat­ed to na­ture, Roach said, "We re­ceived an as­tound­ing num­ber of se­lec­tions, a lit­er­al out­pour­ing which will ap­peal to the var­i­ous sens­es, but which al­so should leave us painful­ly aware that we are stew­ards, each and all, charged with pro­tect­ing and pre­serv­ing, lim­it­ing the de­struc­tion which so of­ten is left in our wake." Many of the jour­nal's on­go­ing con­trib­u­tors are from Trinidad and this year is no dif­fer­ent as Vol­ume 26, which is ded­i­cat­ed to na­ture and ecol­o­gy, in­cludes work by Trinida­di­an Bar­bara Jenk­ins, Sum­mer Ed­ward, June Am­ing, Aaron Adesh Singh, and Cyn­thia James. An­dre Ba­goo al­so con­tributes to the book re­view sec­tion while sev­er­al pieces of Danielle Boodoo-For­tune's art­work are fea­tured.

Copies can be or­dered by email­ing Quilin Mars at mail­to:qmars@live.uvi.edu