Re­turn­ing lit­er­a­ture and the no­tion of read­ing for plea­sure to pub­lic dis­course are en­tire­ly com­mend­able goals and the com­mit­ment of the Bo­cas Lit Fest or­gan­is­ers to the sec­ond year of this fes­ti­val and the grow­ing en­gage­ment sur­round­ing it has the po­ten­tial to stim­u­late a cul­ture of read­ing in the re­gion gen­er­al­ly and in Trinidad and To­ba­go specif­i­cal­ly.

In 2011, Trinidad and To­ba­go put an un­ex­pect­ed and au­thor­i­ta­tive stamp on the re­gion's lit­er­ary land­scape with the Bo­cas Lit Fest, the first ef­fort at a ma­jor lit­er­ary fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing the works of the re­gion to be host­ed in the coun­try. Last week, the judges for the fes­ti­val's cen­tre­piece event, the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, an­nounced the win­ners of the three genre cat­e­gories, po­et­ry, non­fic­tion and fic­tion, each of which is now short­list­ed for the grand prize.

The works are a de­but col­lec­tion of po­et­ry by Puer­to Ri­can writer and pro­fes­sor Loret­ta Collins Klobah, a bi­og­ra­phy of Be­lize's first prime min­is­ter, George Price, by God­frey P Smith and Earl Lovelace's sixth nov­el. The 2011 grand prize win­ner was Derek Wal­cott for his col­lec­tion, White Egrets, but a com­pelling el­e­ment of that event was the wel­come at­ten­tion giv­en to the de­but short sto­ry col­lec­tion by Tiphanie Yanique, How to Es­cape from a Lep­er Colony, af­ter it won the fic­tion cat­e­go­ry.

Bring­ing fo­cused at­ten­tion on wor­thy lit­er­ary works from the re­gion is a valu­able el­e­ment of the fes­ti­val, and the or­gan­is­ers should seek to am­pli­fy the de­lib­er­a­tions of the judges, led by Bar­ba­di­an writer George Lam­ming, in­to fo­ra which might in­form in­ter­est­ed read­ers about all the works un­der con­sid­er­a­tion, along with the de­serv­ing prize win­ners.

Still, it's not as if the awards are the on­ly thing hap­pen­ing dur­ing Lit Fest. Last year's fes­ti­val was so crammed with use­ful dis­cus­sions, read­ing and pan­el dis­cus­sions that a book lover need­ed a care­ful strat­e­gy to cov­er all his in­ter­ests. In 2012, things look even more chal­leng­ing for read­ers. There are 50 au­thors/speak­ers and 100 events planned for the four-day pro­gramme, in­clud­ing read­ings, dis­cus­sions, per­for­mances, work­shops and a full pro­gramme for chil­dren, which in­cludes sto­ry­telling events around the coun­try dur­ing April.

In 2011, 3,200 peo­ple at­tend­ed the fes­ti­val, in­clud­ing events held for chil­dren. Not con­tent to re­peat last year's suc­cess, the com­mit­tee has learned from the 2011 ex­pe­ri­ence and added new in­for­ma­tion tracks tar­get­ing emerg­ing writ­ers, who will ben­e­fit from a more ful­some work­shop se­ries built in­to the pro­gramme, as well as one-on-one cri­tique ses­sions for a se­lect group of bud­ding au­thors.

Nur­tur­ing this tal­ent and putting them in touch with coach­es, men­tors and col­leagues is cru­cial to the long term vi­sion of the Bo­cas Lit Fest, and in 2012, projects in­volv­ing the Brook­lyn Book Fes­ti­val, the West In­di­an Lit­er­a­ture Con­fer­ence, the Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion and the British Coun­cil will be an­nounced dur­ing the event.

The nexus of these strate­gies will be a one-day brain­storm­ing work­shop at this year's fes­ti­val which will launch the Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture Ac­tion Group, which will seek to weave the many skeins of tal­ent present in the re­gion in­to a more ef­fec­tive, aware and part­ner fo­cused ef­fort at mo­bil­is­ing the Caribbean lit­er­ary sec­tor in­to more ef­fec­tive ini­tia­tives.

Such ef­forts should be wel­comed in an en­vi­ron­ment in which the em­pha­sis on learn­ing and read­ing has shift­ed from the ephemer­al to the prac­ti­cal, from the dream­er to the re­al­ist. The vis­tas of won­der and am­bi­tions that books stoked that drove so many of our lit­er­ary greats to their finest achieve­ments are no longer prized items on the agen­da of our cit­i­zens, our schools or even our per­son­al leisure time.

Re­turn­ing lit­er­a­ture and the no­tion of read­ing for plea­sure to pub­lic dis­course are en­tire­ly com­mend­able goals and the com­mit­ment of the Bo­cas Lit Fest or­gan­is­ers to the sec­ond year of this fes­ti­val and the grow­ing en­gage­ment sur­round­ing it has the po­ten­tial to stim­u­late a cul­ture of read­ing in the re­gion gen­er­al­ly and in Trinidad and To­ba­go specif­i­cal­ly.

The will­ing­ness of the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee to ad­just fo­cus and con­tent af­ter eval­u­at­ing the 2011 event is a pos­i­tive move and con­tin­u­ous reeval­u­a­tion of the con­sid­er­able chal­lenges they will meet will be crit­i­cal to the con­tin­ued suc­cess of the fes­ti­val and the growth of a lo­cal au­di­ence of en­thu­si­as­tic read­ers.