Tanya Batson-Savage, Freelance Writer
Colin Channer, editor of the collection 'Iron Balloons: Hit Fiction From Jamaica's Calabash Writers Workshop', speaks at the launch of the Calabash Literary Festival recently. The collection is published by Akashic Books and combines the work of tutors and participants in the workshop. - IAN ALLEN/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
AN IRON balloon is getting ready to float and hopefully burst over the black sands of Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth, when the sixth instalment of the Calabash International Literary festival is staged May 26 to 28.
This oxymoron, a bursting iron balloon, comes in the form of the first fiction publication from the Calabash Writers Workshop. Dubbed Iron Balloons: Hit Fiction From Jamaica's Calabash Writers Workshop. The collection is published by Akashic Books and edited by the Calabash artistic director and founder, Colin Channer.
Channer's fiction is also included in the collection which combines works of tutors from the workshop as well as participants. As such it features works by Elizabeth Nunez, Marlon James, Kwame Dawes, Kaylie Jones, Konrad Kirlew, Alwin Bully, A-dZiko Simba and Sharon Leach. The collection will be officially launched during the festival with a reading by actor Delroy Lindo on Friday night at 9:00.
LITERARY FLAMES BURNING
The production of Iron Balloons is the first set of new fiction that has come from the Calabash Trust, though not its first publication. Last year the Calabash programme, under the theme 'The fire is Lit' continued to keep literary flames burning by both producing six chapbooks from poets who participated in the workshop.
The trust also produced their second anniversary reissue, this time John Hearne's Voices Under the Window, which had been out of print. The 2004 reprint of Roger Mais' Brother Man, which subsequently made it back to the high school reading list, had started the series.
DELIBERATE NAME
At the launch of the festival, held last week at Strawberry Hill, Channer noted that the title was quite a deliberate play on the musical terminology, usually used derisively for those who can't get a 'buss'. The publication is intended to turn this on its head give the workshop participants 'a leg up'. Channer further explained that as with the poetry chapbooks, the writers included in Iron Balloons were selected through a competition, which he argues allows "a bar" to be set in maintaining a standard to getting published.
"You need to have a gang, a godmother, a godfather, somebody who can make you get a buss," Channer explained. As such, by including the workshop tutors who are already successful writers, the up and coming writers in the collection get to be published with reputable writers by a reputable company. "A writer is held hostage by the publishers who are here," Channer said.
So, apparently, Iron Balloons is a way of paying the ransom for local writers, who have the talent but have found the recourse to publication is hard.
