AUTHORS
The Caribbean American Book and Art Fair (CABAFAIR) and South Florida's diverse communities welcome Derek Walcott for the inaugural Night of the Nobel Laureates, the new feature of the Book and Art Fair. Walcott unites white and black but also reminds us that his poetry amalgamates material from different cultures, West Indian, African, and European.
South Florida reflects these ideals as diverse communities strive to live together in mutual friendship, peace and harmony. The values we all share are also permanent in the Caribbean-American community. We salute this distinguished son of the Caribbean whose dense poetry weaves a network of relationships with other poets, unveiling an intimate way of identity, personal and Caribbean.
Derek Walcott has been an assiduous traveler to other countries but has always, not least in his efforts to create an indigenous drama, felt himself deeply-rooted in Caribbean society with its cultural fusion of African, Asiatic and European elements.
Derek Walcott
An exquisite jewel of a book,
Paule Marshall's memoir, Triangular Road, is a welcome work of nonfiction by one of our greatest writers. Neither tell-all nor confessional, Triangular Road does tell the story of a writer in motion, a self-described traveling woman, one who has devoted her life to creating complexly rendered novels and stories about the historical, psychological and political dimensions of the African Diaspora. In fact, Triangular Road should be read alongside
Marshall's best-known works of fiction, Brown Girl, Brownstones, Reena and Other Stories, Chosen Place, Timeless People and Praise Song for the Window.
Triangular Road traces Marshall's travels from her home in Brooklyn to Barbados, Paris, London, Grenada and Nigeria. In so doing, it also traces her journey as a writer, demonstrating the way that history and place shaped her sense of vocation and history as well as character, setting, and theme.
Paule Marshall
Poet Laureate of Port of Spain
The Poet Laureate is that city's poet, has voice, has to be listened to, taken seriously, recognized, honored, celebrated, courted, wooed, can pronounce freely on whoever, has the cultural range and social power that the Calypsonian fought for and maintain, has international connections s/he can call on. S/he a people's poet, ready to go even forward even as s/he takes us further. Her titles are Out of the Shadows, Focussed, God Child, Loving The Skin I'm In and Moving in the Light.
Eintou Pearl Springer
Geoffrey Philp is the author of the children's book, Grandpa Sydney's Anancy Stories, a novel, Benjamin, My Son, and a short story collection, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien. He has also written Twelve Poems and A Story for Christmas, and four poetry collections, including Exodus and Other Poems, Florida Bound, hurricane center, and xango music. His poems and short stories have been published in the Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse and the Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. He lives in Miami, Florida.
See Philp's Blog
Zee Edgell was born, in Belize--then British Honduras. Her first novel, Beka Lamb, was published in 1982, a year after her country was born as the newly independent Belize, making it the first novel of the new nation. Beka Lamb also gained the distinction of being Belize’s first novel to reach beyond its borders and gain an international audience, winning Britain’s Fawcett Society Book Prize, a prize awarded annually to a work of fiction that contributes to an understanding of women’s position in society today. In her subsequent novels, In Times Like These (1991), which portrays the turmoil of Belize on the brink of independence, and The Festival of San Joaquin (1997), the story of a woman accused of murdering her husband, and in her short stories, Edgell skillfully explores the layers of Belize’s complicated social and racial stratification through the lens of her female protagonists. From its colonial history to the movement toward independence and right up to the present day, her novels filter the political through the personal with great compassion.
Nelly Rosario is the author of Song of the Water
Saints that won a PEN Open Book Award. She is the recipient of 2008 The
Sherwood Anderson Award in Fiction. Rosario has taught creative writing at
Columbia University, where she earned an MFA in Fiction and she teaches at Texas
State University.
Nelly Rosario
Carole Boyce Davies was born in Trinidad. She was recruited to build the African-New World Studies Program at
FIU, she served as its director for three successful three-year appointments, which moved the program to international recognition. Boyce-Davies has degrees from the University of Maryland (BA, 1972); Howard University (M.A., 1974) and (University of Ibadan, Nigeria (Ph.D., 1978). In September 2008, she will join the staff at Cornell University. Dr. Davies is Director of Florida Africana Studies Consortium (FLASC).
Left of Karl Marx is a brand new book on the Essence Bestsellers List for July 2008, which assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915-1964). Jones is buried in London's Highgate Cemetery, to the left of Karl Marx. Importantly, Jones was the only black woman political prisoner among the communists tried during the McCarthy era. A pioneering radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist Claudia Jones's location in death gives the book its title. Boyce Davies also sees Claudia's politics, which accounted for race and gender, as also Left of Karl Marx. More. . .
Opal Palmer Adisa is a celebrated writer with seven books to her credit, a literary critic, a compassionate teacher, an accomplished storyteller and gifted diversity trainer. Born in Jamaica, her most recent poetry collection is Caribbean Passion. Her book of poetry, Tamarind and Mango Women, won the 1992 American Book Award and her novel, It Begins With Tears, was recommended in Great Books for High School Kids: A Teacher's Guide to Books that Can Change Teens Lives.
Opal Palmer Adisa
Earl Lovelace
is a premier novelist of the contemporary Caribbean from Trinidad and Tobago. His novels include:
While Gods are Falling (1965), The Schoolmaster (1968), The Wine of Astonishment (1982),
The Dragon Can’t Dance (1979), and Salt (Best Book, Commonwealth Writers Prize, 1997). He has published a collection of short stories
A Brief Conversation and Other Stories (1988) and a collection of plays
Jestina’s Calypso and Other Plays (1984). He is also a cultural critic whose writing was a regular feature of the Express in Trinidad for many years. Some of his essays and lectures have been collected and edited for publication by Funso Aiyejina in
Growing in the Dark (2003). While Lovelace is settled in Trinidad, he travels extensively and has taught at universities in the USA and the Caribbean.
Earl Lovelace
Joan Cartwright
was born in Queens,
NY, where her Cherokee mother and Bahamian father raised her and a younger brother, Carlton. Joan holds a B.A. in Music and Communications from LaSalle University and a M.A. in Communications from Florida Atlantic University. In a 30-year span, this notable jazz vocalist has toured 15 countries on five continents and has written over 60 songs. Joan is the CEO of
FYI Communications, Inc. She produced both of her recordings, Feelin' Good (1995) and In Pursuit Of A Melody (2005).
An entrepreneur, Joan
is a journalist, radio DJ, festival producer and founder of Women in Jazz South
Florida, Inc., and a website designer for an array of musicians, fine artists,
authors and entrepreneurs. She is a composer that has rubbed shoulders with the greatest jazz artists in the world, including Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Gloria Lynne, Betty Carter,
Abbey Lincoln, Max Roach and McCoy Tyner. Her books,
A History of African-American Jazz and Blues, Amazing Musicwomen and So, You Want To Be A Singer? A Manual for Up and Coming
Divas, highlight the challenges faced
by African-Americans and women in the music business. Her websites are www.wijsf.org
and www.fyicomminc.com.
Her online networks are linked at www.musicwoman.ning.com
Edwidge Danticat
EDWIDGE
DANTICAT: DISTINGUISHED HOST WRITER FIRST ONE BOOK/ONE CARIBBEAN SELECTION
Breath Eyes Memory
Edwidge Danticat
Ekwueme Michael Thelwell was in 1970 the founding chairman of the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has been a member of the faculty ever since. He is currently Professor of Literature and Writing. The Jamaican born writer, activist, educator, intellectual received his early education at Jamaica College. He came to the United States in 1959 to attend Howard University and went on to do his graduate work at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Thelwell was active in the non-violent Civil Rights Movement, participating in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP). Thelwell's anti-apartheid activism in the 1980s resulted in successful legislation enacting a law against corporate tax write-offs for U.S. based corporations paying taxes to the apartheid regime in South Africa. He considers this law his most effective and consequential political achievement.
In addition to his political achievements, Thelwell was a senior advisor for the television series, Eyes on the Prize, Part II. Professor Thelwell's work has been published, nationally and internationally, in journals and magazines, including Black Scholar, Massachusetts Review, Temps Moderne, Partisan Review, Presence Africaine (Paris), New York Times , and African Commentary . His novel The Harder They Come (1980) is a Jamaican classic, and his political and literary essays are in Duties, Pleasures and Conflicts (1987). His literary awards include fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, Society for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts and Centennial Medal of the Institute of Jamaica. After the death of Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) in 1998, Thelwell prepared Carmichael's memoirs for publication. The long awaited memoir of the controversial civil rights leader and Pan-Africanist revolutionary was published as Ready for Revolution : The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (2003). Professor Thelwell is working on a critical study of the novels of Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.
Ekwueme Michael Thelwell
Cynthia
McLeod-Ferrier's first novel Hoe duur was the suiker? (The high price of sugar) dealt with the Jewish colonist families in Suriname in the 2nd half of the 18th century and was first published in 1987, in Paramaribo. This book was a best seller from the start and remains up to now the most sold book ever in Suriname .
In 1988 Dr. Donald McLeod became Ambassador to Belgium for the second time. Cynthia thus had the opportunity to continue her historical research in the State Archives of the Netherlands and other archives. In 1990 a children's book was published Lafu, het hondje van Sita (Lafu, Sita's little dog). In 1992 followed the second historical novel Vaarwel Merodia (Farewell Merodia).
Cynthia McLeod-Ferrier
Rubadiri Victor is a young multi-media artist, scholar and activist uniquely networked amongst four generations of creative practitioners in Trinidad and Tobago. Rubadiri works in TV, Film, theatre, painting, music and Mas. His artistic and inter-generational work (as well as the frustrations artist face in his landscape) has led him to become possibly the country’s foremost cultural activist and a scholar with new critical takes on contemporary cultural theory.
Rubadiri’s publishes amongst other things ‘Generation Lion’ his historic magazine which documents T&T’s Genius in its Diaspora. His photographic book on Traditional Mas, Meditations on the Traditions has just been published.
Rubadiri Victor
Chezia Thompson Cager is the winner of the 1999 and 2001
Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Poetry. The Mid-Atlantic
poetry journal Poet Lore says of her first book, Reading The
Presence of Things Unseen: Giant Talk is like being guided through the
urban and political landscape of the last twenty-five years by someone on roller
blades. Thompson Cager's ambitions for poetry are larger than most poets. . .
the overall effect is grand as [she] creates her own myth of rejuvenation."
Thompson Cager's chapbook Power Objects: A Message In A Bottle To My
Daughter and Her Friends was published as the winner of the 1996 Artscape
Poetry Competition judged by Josephine Jacobsen. Director of Spectrum of Poetic
Fire Reading Series and host of the six-hour Saint Valentine Sunday Poetry
Marathon at Maryland Institute College of Art, she recently edited When
Divas Laugh by The Diva Squad Poetry Collective to be released by Black
Classic Press in March 2001.
Dorothea
Smartt is a poet and live artist. Described as "accessible and
dynamic". Her work was selected to promote the best of contemporary writing
in
Dorothea Smartt
Lorna Owens is
a highly sort after Gender Expert, International Speaker, Executive/ Life Coach
and Author who travels the World teaching the Art and Science of
Success to Corporations and Professional Women's Group. She has
appeared on NBC, TBN and TV in Jamaica, Cayman Island and Bermuda. The
Miami Herald called her a Pioneer and the Mother of Reinvention;
Advance for Nurses says she wows her Audiences. Lorna Owens is
a
Registered Nurse, Midwife, Attorney, Radio Talk show Host And the
Women Gather Radio heard on Blog Talk Radio: the gathering place for
women around the world.
Her AMAZING New Book EVERYDAY GRACE EVERY MIRACLE set in Jamaica tells life changing stories from men and women around the world.
-
Founder Women Behind Bars
-
Founder www.andthewomengather.com
-
Media partner: And the Women Gather Radio
Jessica
"Omilani" Alarcón is the author of (Re)Writing
Osun: Osun in the Politics of Gender, Race, & Sexuality - From Colonization
to Creolization" (2008), Rappoetry and three musical CDs Lyrical
Kiss (2009) Yeye's
Oyin (2008) and Rappoetry (2008). Her
research interests are identity in the African Diaspora, Yoruba
history and tradition, as well as the performing arts. She is fluent in four languages
other than English and blends the linguistic abilities in her creative
works. She has traveled and studied business, languages, and performing arts in
Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the
Philip St. Hill
is the
Deputy Consul General at the Consulate General of Barbados in
Dr. Paula
Marie Seniors is an assistant professor in the Africana Studies and
Sociology Departments at Virginia Tech. She holds a PhD and a master’s degree
in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego. She also holds a
master’s degree in vocal performance from New York University, and a Bachelors
of Fine Arts degree in dance from The City College of New York. In 2007-2008 The
Africana Studies and Sociology Departments at Virginia Tech honored her with a
post- doctoral fellowship.
Beyond "Lift Every Voice and Sing:" The Culture of Uplift, Identity, and Politics in Black Musical Theater explores the realities of African American life and history as refracted through the musical theater productions of Bob Cole, J. Rosamond Johnson and James Weldon Johnson and will reach publication in July 2009, Ohio State University Press. Her peer reviewed articles include Transforming the Carmen Narrative: The Case of Carmen the Hip Hopera. New Directions in Hip Hop Studies, The Journal of African American History; Jack Johnson, Paul Robeson and The Hyper Masculine African American Ubermensch, Harlem Renaissance, Politics, Arts, Letters. John Hopkins University Press; Cole and Johnson’s The Red Moon (1908-1910): Re-imagining African American and Native American Female Education at Hampton Institute.” The Journal of African American History, Winter 2008; Teaching and Learning U.S. History Through A Multi Cultural Curriculum: Conquest Slavery, and Indispensable Labor, The Black History Bulletin. (Summer-Fall, 2007, Volume 70, Number 2); and Ada Overton Walker, Abbie Mitchell and the Gibson Girl: Reconstructing African American Womanhood, The International Journal of Africana Studies, Volume 13, Issue 2, Fall 2007. The Journal of the History of Sexuality is reviewing Seniors article Radical Black Female Activism, Southern Erotic Sadism.
Dr. Paula Marie Seniors
Dr. Zekeh S. Gbotokuma was born
in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He earned a doctorate in Philosophy from Gregorian University,
a Bachelor’s degree in Theology from the Pontifical Urban University,
a Diploma in International Studies from the Italian Society for International
Organization, all in Rome. After twelve years of education and experience in Europe (Italy, Germany, France, England),
Dr. Gbotokuma is currently an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director
of the Center for Global Studies at Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland
(USA). He is a polyglot and the founding President of Polyglots in Action for
Diversity, Inc. His multilingual publications include, inter alia, Césaire, Césairologie et l’Humanisme Universel
(cesairology.com,
Xlibris, 2007), A Pan-African Encyclopedia
(Edwin Mellen Press, 2003), Dizionario
Italiano-Lingala/ Lingala-Italiano (Armando Curcio, 1990), Lingala-English
(Kasahorow Pan-African Living Dictionary Online), and numerous articles written
in English, French, and Italian and published in U.S. and European journals, magazines, and conference proceedings. He is the
founding editor of COSMOPORT – The
Newsletter of the Center for Global Studies at Morgan State University. His works in progress include,
inter alia, a multilingual Lingala-English-French-Italian Dictionary. Dr. Gbotokuma is the
recipient of The Dr. Sandye Jean McIntyre
II International Award 2008 for demonstrating “extraordinary commitment to
global learning and international understanding at Morgan State University.”
Dr. Zekeh S. Gbotokuma
Ian Franklin migrated to the US from Trinidad and Tobago four decades ago. He is in Distribution and works for Target Corporation. He is passionate about the National Instrument of Trinidad and Tobago, The Steel Pan. He has done two publications; "400 Questions and Answers on Pan from 1960 to Present" and "Crossword Puzzles" of Trinidad and Tobago." The birth of the Steel Pan has been written by a number of authors over the years. However, my pan book is different, because it covers all of the Steel Pan Competitions from 1960 to the Present. It's a Question and Answers Compilation with 523 Q&A's. They are in the Trinidad and Tobago School Libraries as well as the Public Libraries.
