Founder and artistic director of Calabash, Colin Channer (left) with film maker Perry Henzell at the Calabash launch, held at Red Bones Café, Braemar Avenue recently. Henzell will read at the festival and there will also be a screening of 'The Harder They Come'. - WINSTON SILL/FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHER
A QUARTET of seminars will make the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona Campus, an official 'no drone zone' on Saturday, April 23.
And that covers the drone of conversation during the hour while the panellists for the various seminars are on, as well as 'deady deady' behaviour in the half-hour 'saidy saidy' general discussion that ends each session.
INTERESTING TO THE ASPIRING WRITER
Organised by the Calabash International Literary Festival Trust, the series of Calabash Publishing Seminars will cover a range of topics that will interest the aspiring writer, the theatre buff, prospective publisher and anyone to whom words are the spice of life. Like all Calabash events, the seminars are free and open to the public, but voluntary contributions will be accepted.
The day starts at 9:00 a.m. with a discussion on 'What Does Writing Talent Look Like', for which Calabash founder and author Colin Channer will host Malika Adero, editor with Atria Books, literary agent Marie Brown, Distinguished Poet in Residence at the University of South Carolina Kwame Dawes and Toure, novelist and pop culture correspondent for CNN's American Morning.
The question 'Do Books Really Matter Anymore?' will be addressed in the second seminar, which begins at 11:00 a.m. Again hosted by Colin Channer, the guests are Newsday columnist Kevin Baldeosingh, Poets & Writers magazine editor Mary Gannon and Christopher John Farley, novelist and senior editor at Time Magazine.
There is a one-hour break between the end of the discussion session for that seminar and the beginning of the Kwame Dawes hosted seminar that begins at 1:30 p.m. It promises to be a cracker and just maybe a sidesplitter with actor and poet Owen 'Blakka' Ellis, playwright Trevor Rhone, freelance writer with The Gleaner Tanya Batson-Savage and Brian Heap, director and tutor at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, coming together in a potentially explosive combination.
The day ends on a somewhat relaxing note, with a peek into the libraries of attorney-at-law and broadcaster Antonette Haughton-Cardenas, CEO of Paymaster Jamaica, Audrey Marks, and Member of Parliament for West St. Thomas, James Robertson. With Colin Channer as host, they will answer to "What is the book that means the most to you?" And, going further, their perceptiveness will be tested as they will be asked "As you think about the guests, what kinds of books do you think would speak to them?"
In a release from the organisers, the Calabash International Literary Festival's founder and artistic director, Colin Channer, summed up the feel of the seminars which, although about literally deadly serious topics, are not run like school classes. "The seminars are a lot of fun. In fact, they don't feel like seminars at all. The whole experience has the vibe of a talk show on a cutting-edge cable network like HBO. What makes us unique is that we have this blessed out vibe, but we're talking about important matters related to publishing and books," he said.
Kwame Dawes, the festival's director of programming, put the face-to-face sessions in the context of networking. "The seminars are a way for Colin and I to share our professional contacts with the people of Jamaica. There is a lot of writing talent in Jamaica and we have been helping to develop it with our workshops. But information about the world of publishing is badly needed as well and that is why we do these seminars once a year," he said.
