The biennial Calabash International Literary Festival’s lineup for 2018 was announced at RedBones Blues Café in Kingston, Jamaica last night. According to Co-Founder Kwame Dawes the festival, “It is hard to ignore the fact that among so many of our usual delights, this year’s program boasts a formidable line up of women’s voices rich in wisdom, passion and brilliant intellectual prowess!”
The festival’s theme this year is “Lit Up” an acknowledgment of the power of the word to ignite passions and spur action. Calabash is now an institution with more than a decade of stagings but it simulataneously manages to remain fresh while staying consistent. Mixing emerging talent with established writers, new voices with those writers of deep experience and always offering a variety of genres, the festival continues to be “earthy, inspirational, daring and diverse”.
Striking this year is the amazing array of female poets with four of these women being Poet Laureates of their countries, Carol Ann Duffy from Britain, Jamaica’s own Lorna Goodison, Acadian/Canadian Georgette LeBlanc and Tracy K Smith from the USA who was recently confirmed for her 2nd term.
Accolades and awards are commonplace for Calabash writers for example Guggenheim Fellow and a two-time Pushcart Poetry Prize winner Patrica Smith is also the 4 time individual Poetry Slam champion, Tayari Jones 4th novel “An American Marriage” was selected in February as Oprah’s Book Club pick and Emmy award winning actor Michael Imperioli best know for his role in The Sopranos will read from his debut novel “The Perfume Burned His Eyes”.
President of the prestigious publishing house Farrar Strauss Giroux Jonathan Galassi will be in conversation with Paul Holdengraber sharing his decades at the centre of the literary world. Poet, professor, editor and author Kevin Young was recently appointed Director of the Schomburg Center and poetry editor of the New Yorker magazine so we are excited he has found time to come and share with Kwame Dawes how he manages life as a multi-hyphenate.
Calabash poets and writers hail from across the globe with the continent of Africa being ably represented by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley (Liberia), Safia Elhillo (Sudan), Peter Kimani (Kenya) and Warsan Shire (Somalia). Warsan’s poetry “Lit Up” Beyonce’s Lemonade visual album catapulting her words into the pop culture zeitgeist.
Though they reside overseas the Caribbean claims Krystal Sital from Trinidad, Malika Booker of Guyanese & Grenadian heritage, and Ishion Hutchinson and Whiting Award winner Safiya Sinclair from Jamaica who receive accolades for their work consistently. Ishion’s latest collection “House of Lords and Commons” recently winning the National Book Critics Award for Poetry in the United States.
The mix of genres our writers bring to the stage by the sea means that our audience will be able to sample writing they may not have encountered before. Joshua Jelly Shapiro offers up non-fiction Sloane Crosley writes short stories, Laura Lippman crime fiction, Rivers Solomon writes sci-fi and Akala will be launching his eagerly anticipated memoir “Natives”.
Ever mindful of Calabash’s commitment to a global literary culture, we will hear work from Thrity Umrigar and Hani Kunzru. And while both will read in English, their novels have been translated into twenty languages!
There will be tribute paid at the Festival to Barbadian poet and literary icon, Kamau Brathwaite’s seminal work, The Arrivants. Four well-known Jamaicans will read passages of this truly monumental work of Caribbean literature. In the past Calabash has drawn attention to the work of Caribbean writers in this way, and so Kamau Braithwaite now joins writers, Erna Brodber, John Hearne, Roger Mais, Jean Rhys, Neville Dawes, V.S. Naipaul, Claude McKay and Orlando Patterson all of whom have been celebrated in this manner at Calabash. There will also be tributes paid to the St. Lucian Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott who was a strong supporter of the Festival.
Our Sunday musical tribute will honour the legendary Don Drummond as the Calabash Acoustic Ensemble made up of stalwart Jamaican musicians, Ibo Cooper, Stevie Golding, Wayne Armond and friends, focus on the man and the legacy of his genius which continues to influence Jamaican music today.
More information on the programme and participants are on the website www.calabashfestival.org and the Calabash Jamaica Facebook page is great resource for all things related to the Festival.
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Photo via: Louisa Calio
