The third annual Calabash International Literary Festival takes place in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth, May 23 through 25. Flair caught up with some of the female authors scheduled to participate.
BERNARDINE EVARISTO
A VISITING Professor in Creative Writing at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York. Author of two novels-in-verse Lara (1997) and The Emperor's Babe (2001). The Emperor's Babe was a Book of the Year for 5 national newspapers in Great Britain and recipient of an Arts Council Writers Award.
Q: Do you think people are reading enough?
A: In a word, no. Literature can stimulate the brain in new and imaginative ways and open up whole worlds to you wherever you are -- past, present, future and fantasised. All this contained within a few pages of a small book.
Poetry and fiction can profoundly transform and enlighten our everyday lives, and reward us with great riches and humour. But we're living in a fast-food culture of instant gratification and literature requires more of an attention span than watching yet another generic Hollywood film or another mindless game show on TV or listening to music that stirs our emotion but not necessarily our brains.
A hundred years ago very few people could actually read. Now that literacy is much higher around the world, most people choose not to read. Such a pity.
Q: What's your favourite book?
A: There are too many to pick just one but I'd say all of Toni Morrison's early books, Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, Midsummer by Derek Walcott, and All that Blue by Gaston-Paul Effa for starters!
Q: Quick, what does the word calabash conjure in your mind?
A: A mix of ingredients put into a pot and stirred up to create magic.
Q: What about the name Jamaica, what comes to mind?
A: Jamaican friends, multicultural Britain, luxuriant foliage, dynamic people, crime and poverty, national pride.
Q: Is writing difficult for you? How do you get over writer's block?
A: Ah ha, the agony and ectasy of writing. Writer's block is a state of mind, which I choose not to visit. In other words, if writing is like breathing to you -- you'll find a way to get those words out.
CATHERINE MCKINLEY
A FORMER student of the University of the West Indies, Mona, she is currently the Associate Director of the Publishing Certificate Program at the City College of New York where she teaches graduate and undergraduate creative writing.
Q: Do you think people are reading enough?
A: I would like to see people read with the seriousness and devotion and dailyness (or hourliness!) they put into doing their hair.
Q: What's your favourite book?
A: Right now it is When the Emperor was Divine by Julie Otsuka (Knopf, 2002). It is an absolutely brilliant little book that has one of the most shattering moments I've encountered in fiction, and it has an important message for all of us in the face of our present world political crisis.
Q: Quick, what does the word calabash conjure in your mind?
A: Calabash: Sound (clack clack) and beautiful form.
Q: What about the name Jamaica, what comes to mind?
A: My days as a student at UWI, Mona. And Jamaica Kincaid, the brilliant, contentious, self-obsessed writer who makes me love her in spite of herself.
Q: Is writing difficult for you? How do you get over writer's block?
A: Writing is difficult. It is the hardest work I've ever done, and I was raised by farmers who might have invented the Protestant Work Ethic. I'm not sure I buy the idea of writer's block. To write is to struggle daily with yourself and the word. Sometimes you win, most days you simply fight.
MARILYN NELSON
POET LAUREATE of the US State of Connecticut, three times a finalist for the National Book Award, and a professor of English at the University of Delaware.
Q: Do you think people are reading enough?
A: Maybe, but quantity isn't the same as quality.
Q: What's your favourite book?
A: Good Night, Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown. Seriously, it's a lovely book, just about perfect.
Q: Quick, what does the word calabash conjure in your mind?
A: Dried squash.
Q: What about the name Jamaica, what comes to mind?
A: Jamaica Kincaid. Beaches. Harry Belafonte.
Q: Is writing difficult for you? How do you get over writer's block?
A: Yes. I use various techniques, for example visualisation exercises, meditation tapes, deadlines.
