Caribbean poets Ishion Hutchinson and Vladimir Lucien recently participated in a conversation called ‘In search of a muse: On writing poetry’ at the Jaipur Literature Festival, held in Jaipur, India, from January 19 to 23, 2017.
Over at Book Notes, Ann-Margaret Lim has joined authors such as Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Lauren Groff, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Jesmyn Ward, Heidi Julavits and Hari Kunzru in serving up a delicious playlist for her latest collection, Kingston Buttercup.
Christine Craig's poem 'Elsa's Poem' appears in Stabroek News, where Al Creighton examines its meaning and importance.
'in this poem, “Elsa’s Version,” she finds herself in the company of such poets as Senior, Goodison and Mordecai'
The Cornell Department of English Program in Creative Writing has selected Lauren K Alleyne to receive the Philip Freund Prize in Creative Writing for excellence in publication. The alumni prize comes with a $5,000 stipend, and invitation to read as part of their reading series. The monies that support it come from the Philip Freund ‘29 endowment. Three other alumni writers have been invited to participate in the reading on Thursday 2 November 2017. Other Freund Prize recipients Stephen Gutierrez, Tacey M. Atsitty and Jeninne Capo Crucet.
Leone Ross gives an insightful new interview with Musa Okwonga, talking about writing, the sexualisation of women and the magic in the everyday:
I’m writing magic realism for a simple reason. It’s this: it’s fun. I was the kid who loved Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, who always loved weird crap, and so it took time for me to give myself permission to write weird crap. It took [reading] Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez at university for me to think, ‘oh my God, the adult version of weird crap, that’s so cool!’.
Transmedia writer, poet and inTer-aCtive artist Maya Chowdhry is looking for a technology mentor to assist her with a research and development project investigating the use of augmented reality to produce an immersive live experience.
The New Yorker's profile of Ishion Hutchinson is a wonderful read and a great look at his latest collection. In the review, his knack for language is compared to Blake's:
Maya Chowdhry is currently working on a research and development project called Peas on Earth. Using augmented reality to produce an immersive live experience, Maya is building on and developing work created via Word of Warning's Divergency. She is investigating with technologists, live artists and potential audiences to create a show that capitalises on the best aspects of performance and technology.
Dorothea Smartt’s work typically bridges the islands of Britain and Barbados, effortlessly shuttling between local and global scenes, as it weaves a diasporic web. She has two full collections, Connecting Medium (2001) and Ship Shape (2008). In the latter, ‘a powerful work of reclamation, restitution and reanimation’ (Wasafiri) she offers a name and imagined life to the African buried in Samboo’s Grave, Lancaster.
Ahead of the awards ceremony for the Forward Prizes, Tiphanie Yanique spoke to the Forward Foundation about her work. She spoke about her first full-length collection for adults and the impetus behind creating new books:
