Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The fu­ture of Caribbean re­gion­al­ism will be one of the hot top­ics to take cen­tre stage at this year’s Bo­cas Lit Fest. The event, which runs from April 30 to May 3, was launched yes­ter­day at NALIS in Port-of-Spain with pro­gramme di­rec­tor Nicholas Laugh­lin re­veal­ing this year’s theme: All To­geth­er Now.

The 16th edi­tion of the fes­ti­val will fea­ture 150 writ­ers, speak­ers and per­form­ers from Trinidad and To­ba­go and fur­ther afield.

Laugh­lin said the fes­ti­val plays a cru­cial role in mak­ing at­ten­dees aware of the world around them.

“The work of the Bo­cas Lit Fest has nev­er been more ur­gent than at the very present. Books, sto­ries and po­ems aren’t just a plea­sur­able way to pass the time; they are ve­hi­cles for un­der­stand­ing, ex­plain­ing, and ques­tion­ing our­selves, our so­ci­ety, our time and place,” he said. “More than ever, we need cit­i­zens who are in­formed about our past and present to be able to imag­ine our fu­ture, who can think crit­i­cal­ly, and out­side the lim­its of stereo­type, who can dis­cern fact from fic­tion, ma­m­aguy and mau­vais langue. Cit­i­zens who can en­gage in the kind of in­tel­li­gent and prin­ci­pled de­bate that is the foun­da­tion of re­al democ­ra­cy. This is the true val­ue of the work we do.”

Laugh­lin said it has been a chal­leng­ing time for in­vest­ment in the arts.

“We are in a very chal­leng­ing time for arts and cul­ture, not be­cause peo­ple don’t want them, but across the board, the arts and NGOs that de­vel­op and pro­mote them, are un­der se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial strain. Hon­est­ly, this is the most dif­fi­cult time in the past 30 years to try to fundraise for arts and cul­ture in T&T, es­pe­cial­ly for those art forms that some con­sid­er less pop­u­lar, like the lit­er­ary arts,” he added.

St Lu­cian Can­isia Lu­brin, who wrote The World Af­ter Rain: Anne’s Po­em, has been an­nounced as the po­et­ry win­ner.

Justin Haynes’ Ibis was se­lect­ed as the non-fic­tion win­ner, while Tes­sa McWatt’s The Snag: A Moth­er, a For­est and Wild Grief copped the fic­tion cat­e­go­ry.

The over­all win­ner will be an­nounced on May 2 and will walk away with $US10,000.

The an­nu­al Bo­cas Hen­ry Swan­si award was giv­en to Guyana-born, Cana­da-based Frank Bir­bals­ingh, Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at York Uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to, for his work as a schol­ar, teacher and ed­i­tor of Caribbean lit­er­a­ture, and his men­tor­ship of sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of schol­ars.