There is a week in Oc­to­ber each year when a par­tic­u­lar sub­set of read­ers—Caribbean or oth­er­wise—hold their breaths, hop­ing to hear a par­tic­u­lar writer’s name. The rea­son is the an­nu­al an­nounce­ment of the win­ner of the No­bel Prize in Lit­er­a­ture, and the writer this time is Dionne Brand, whom many read­ers and schol­ars con­sid­er a lead­ing con­tender for the award.

Over the past four-and-a-half decades, since her pub­lish­ing de­but in 1978, Dionne Brand has amassed a body of writ­ing—in po­et­ry and prose, fic­tion and es­say, and hy­brid gen­res—ri­valling that of any oth­er liv­ing writer in its in­tel­lec­tu­al depth, po­lit­i­cal com­mit­ment, and for­mal ex­per­i­ment. 

Born in Guayagua­yare, Trinidad, in 1953, and based in Toron­to, Cana­da, since the 1970s, Brand has pub­lished 12 books of po­ems, six of fic­tion, and five of non-fic­tion, and has been recog­nised with a slew of lit­er­ary awards, in­clud­ing the Grif­fin Po­et­ry Prize (the world’s largest in­ter­na­tion­al prize for a sin­gle book of po­et­ry writ­ten in, or trans­lat­ed in­to Eng­lish), Cana­da’s Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al’s Lit­er­ary Award, a Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize, and the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Fic­tion in 2019.

Now read­ers in T&T will have a chance to en­counter this ac­claimed writer up close as she joins the line­up for the 2024 NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, run­ning from Thurs­day to Sun­day. This will be Brand’s sec­ond time at the an­nu­al fes­ti­val, with two events in the pro­gramme fo­cused, re­spec­tive­ly, on her fic­tion and po­et­ry.

On Fri­day night, the fes­ti­val will host a cel­e­bra­tion of the 25th an­niver­sary of Brand’s nov­el At the Full and Change of the Moon. Pub­lished in 1999, At the Full and Change of the Moon opens in Trinidad in 1824 with a mon­u­men­tal act of re­bel­lion by Marie-Ur­sule, an en­slaved woman and se­cret re­sis­tance leader. The sto­ry then fol­lows six gen­er­a­tions of her de­scen­dants as they wan­der from Trinidad to North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope, rest­less­ly search­ing for a bet­ter fu­ture while haunt­ed by ghosts of the past.

The an­niver­sary event—free, untick­et­ed, and open to the pub­lic—will take place at the Big Black Box, the pop­u­lar back­yard per­for­mance space on Mur­ray Street in Wood­brook. It will in­clude an ap­pear­ance by Brand her­self, along­side drama­tised read­ings by ac­tors El­isha Efua Bar­tels, Man­disa Grander­son, and Con­rad Par­ris, and a mu­si­cal per­for­mance by 3canal.

On the morn­ing of the fol­low­ing day, Sat­ur­day, the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest pro­gramme will turn to Brand’s achieve­ments as a po­et, with a spe­cial one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion fo­cused on her lat­est book, Nomen­cla­ture: New and Se­lect­ed Po­ems. Tak­ing place at the Old Fire Sta­tion in down­town Port-of-Spain, start­ing at 10 am, the ses­sion will in­clude read­ings and a wide-rang­ing di­a­logue be­tween Brand and po­et Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan.

Au­di­ences can ex­pect po­ems and con­ver­sa­tions rang­ing in top­ics from the Grena­da Rev­o­lu­tion to the Gulf War of the 1990s to the cat­a­stro­phes of the burn­ing present. “Fe­ro­cious in­clu­siv­i­ty ar­tic­u­lates Brand’s pol­i­tics and life in ac­tivism,” wrote Ram­lochan in a 2019 pro­file pub­lished in Caribbean Beat. “You couldn’t sep­a­rate this po­lit­i­cal an­i­mus from Brand’s work if you tried—in every genre, her com­mit­ment to her peo­ple and her places would shun any small­er analy­sis.”

Some­thing sim­i­lar could be said about many oth­er au­thors in the 2024 NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest line­up—a co­hort of ac­claimed prizewin­ners and lit­er­ary bor­der-crossers in all gen­res, in­clud­ing Hait­ian-Amer­i­can Ed­widge Dan­ti­cat, Trinida­di­an-Cana­di­an Ra­bindranath Ma­haraj, Cana­da-based Amer­i­can Christi­na Sharpe, In­di­an In­ter­na­tion­al Book­er Prize win­ner Gee­tan­jali Shree, and St Lu­cian-Cana­di­an Can­isia Lu­brin. 

The fes­ti­val will al­so in­clude all three win­ners of the 2024 OCM Bo­cas Prize genre cat­e­gories: USVI-born Nicole Sealey for po­et­ry, T&T’s Kevin Jared Ho­sein for fic­tion, and US-based Ja­maican Safiya Sin­clair for non-fic­tion.

Over 150 writ­ers, speak­ers, and per­form­ers are fea­tured in the 2024 pro­gramme, with events in­clud­ing read­ings, dis­cus­sions, book launch­es, work­shops, films, an ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed Ole Mas com­pe­ti­tion, plus a full pro­gramme of events for chil­dren and a spe­cial day of events for teens.

The full fes­ti­val pro­gramme is on­line at www.bo­caslit­fest.com

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go is the ti­tle spon­sor of the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest; OCM, First Cit­i­zens, the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, and the British Coun­cil are the main spon­sors; Massy Foun­da­tion, UWI, and the JB Fer­nan­des Memo­r­i­al Trust are spon­sors.

Box

Dionne Brand at the 2024 NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest 

April 26

AT THE FULL AND CHANGE OF THE MOON: A big night of words and mu­sic at the Big Black Box, cel­e­brat­ing the 25th an­niver­sary of the land­mark nov­el by Dionne Brand

A nov­el that ranges over cen­turies and con­ti­nents, full of un­for­get­table voic­es and sto­ries, At the Full and Change of the Moon is the de­f­i­n­i­tion of a clas­sic. Au­thor Dionne Brand reads from her fic­tion mas­ter­piece, with drama­tised read­ings by El­isha Efua Bar­tels, Man­disa Grander­son, and Con­rad Par­ris, plus a per­for­mance by 3canal.

7 pm un­til • Big Black Box, 33 Mur­ray Street, Wood­brook.

April 27

One-on-one with Brand

Nomen­cla­ture: New and Col­lect­ed Po­ems firm­ly es­tab­lish­es Dionne Brand as one of the ma­jor po­ets writ­ing in any lan­guage to­day. Rang­ing from her ex­pe­ri­ence of the Grena­da Rev­o­lu­tion to the Iraq War of the ear­ly 1990s to the cat­a­stro­phes of the present, these po­ems com­bine an acute po­lit­i­cal aware­ness with deep for­mal ex­per­i­ments. She joins Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan for a wide-rang­ing con­ver­sa­tion about lit­er­ary com­mit­ment.

10-11 am • Old Fire Sta­tion