Dr Joanne Kil­go­ur Dowdy launched her book, Art­ful Sto­ries: The Teacher, the Stu­dent and the Muse-and this time, it's all about men. Kil­go­ur Dowdy has penned sev­er­al books over the years, of­ten ex­plor­ing women's is­sues, em­pow­er­ment, and is­sues con­cern­ing Caribbean and pan-African peo­ple.

Art­ful sto­ries tells the sto­ry of four arts prac­ti­tion­ers from Trinidad and To­ba­go-a light­ing de­sign­er, a dancer, a jazz mu­si­cian and a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er-who have made a name for them­selves in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The work al­so cen­tres on their role as ed­u­ca­tors in their fields. The launch took place on Au­gust 5, at the Au­dio Vi­su­al Room at Nalis on Aber­crom­by Street in Port-of-Spain. Nalis' Ger­ar­da Hold­er wel­comed guests and praised Kil­go­ur Dowdy's ded­i­ca­tion to up­lift­ing her home­land through her work: "She is liv­ing in the US, but her heart is al­ways here in T&T-she is tru­ly Tri­ni to the bone."

UTT lec­tur­er Ju­dith Mor­rain Webb gave re­marks on the new work. She said Kil­go­ur Dowdy's lat­est work was not char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly Joanne "be­cause it's all about men." She said the book had been In­spired by the au­thor's fa­ther, Lennox Kil­go­ur, who won an Olympic medal in 1952. Mor­rain Webb al­so shared ex­cerpts from re­views of the work: "The four artists' jour­neys ex­em­pli­fy the clas­sic role artists have (al­ways) played as teach­ers," said one. An­oth­er called the book "a time­ly and pro­found work that cap­tures" the teacher-stu­dent dy­nam­ic. An­oth­er felt Kil­go­ur Dowdy's book "helped fill the void" in terms of giv­ing recog­ni­tion to the con­tri­bu­tions of Caribbean artists to US and Eu­ro­pean artis­tic schol­ar­ship." Dancer and chore­o­g­ra­ph­er Gre­gor Breedy per­formed a dra­mat­ic piece to the tune of We Are the Cham­pi­ons, be­fore Hold­er in­tro­duced Kil­go­ur Dowdy.

She said the Kil­go­ur Dowdy had writ­ten nine books, all of which helped raise the con­scious­ness of her peo­ple, and laud­ed her for her sense of so­cial con­scious­ness. Kil­go­ur Dowdy said the jour­ney to the cre­ation of the book be­gan sev­en years ago, when her fa­ther died. She said she had been in­spired by his de­ter­mi­na­tion in the face of ob­sta­cles, re­lat­ing how he would work out with "old pieces of rail­road track, he found a way to train" in spite of "gyms that on­ly al­lowed whites," even­tu­al­ly earn­ing an Olympic bronze medal in 1952. She read from her new work, ded­i­cat­ing the read­ing to Nalis' Joan Os­borne, and se­lect­ing the sto­ry of the dancer, Hugo, who danced his way through bar­ri­ers, even­tu­al­ly be­com­ing a re­spect­ed pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus at a Cana­da uni­ver­si­ty. Af­ter the read­ing, guests were treat­ed to re­fresh­ments.