Dawes and friends win Emmy
Published: Wednesday | September 23, 2009
Kwame Dawes reads from his poetry collection 'Hope's Hospice' at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona, in July, with a photograph by Joshua Cogan featured on LiveHopeLove.com on the screen at right. - photo by Mel Cooke
A multimedia website depicting the human face of HIV/AIDS in Jamaica, LiveHopeLove.com, won an Emmy for new approaches to news and documentary programming in the arts, lifestyle and culture category.
The prize was announced on Monday at the 30th annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards at the Lincoln Center's Rose Theater in New York City.
LiveHopeLove.com, an interactive site based on Kwame Dawes' Pulitzer Center project, HOPE: Living and loving with AIDS in Jamaica, has won other accolades including a People's Voice Webby Award, and was the inspiration for the music/spoken word performance, Wisteria and HOPE, which premiered at the National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina on August 6 and 7.
Collections
The website features the poetry of Ghanaian-Jamaican writer Kwame Dawes, the author of more than a dozen collections of verse and numerous plays, essays and books. He is the distinguished poet in residence and Louis Frye Scudder professor of Liberal Arts at the University of South Carolina. This overall project combines extended essays, two short documentaries, a one-hour radio documentary, a collection of poetry inspired by his reporting, the performance of the poems set to music and LiveHopeLove.com.
The music on the site was composed by Kevin Simmonds. The site features the photography of Joshua Cogan, the design of Bluecadet Interactive, and videography by Nathalie Applewhite and Steve Sapienza. The project was managed by Nathalie Applewhite, associate director of the Pulitzer Center. Jon Sawyer, the Center's executive director, was executive producer of LiveHopeLove.com.
News reporting projects
HOPE is the third in a series of news-reporting projects sponsored by the Pulitzer Center with support from the M.A.C AIDS Fund. Earlier projects examined aspects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
A fourth project, also supported by the M.A.C AIDS Fund, examines homophobia and stigma in Jamaica and their impact on that country's HIV/AIDS rate of infection. This project is a collaboration with WNET's public-television programme, WorldFocus, which yesterday began airing the five-part Pulitzer Center series. The video producer is Micah Fink and the cameraperson is Gabrielle Weiss.
