July 11, 2007

Links, links, links – Who invented rock and roll, asks Marlon James–why couldn’t it have been Jackie Brenston? – Geoffrey Philp reviews Crystal Rain, the new speculative fiction novel by Tobias Buckell, set in a futuristic world borrowing many details from the Caribbean. – Imani wonders why better-made editions of classic Jamaican writers like Roger [...]

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July 7, 2007

“I started writing poetry to become a better fiction writer” Jamaican writer Kei Miller at the Reader’s Bookshop, Port of Spain, Wednesday 4 July, 2007. Photograph by Georgia Popplewell Those of you, dear readers, who missed Kei Miller’s reading hosted by the CRB and the Reader’s Bookshop last Wednesday evening in Port of Spain can [...]

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July 7, 2007

“I have a feeling for ritual” It is not an easy thing to do, to live by reason alone, and in every culture there are mysterious regions that are beyond reason. Relics of the past, perhaps not always explicable, but precious to the people who possess them. All rituals are mysterious. To do away with [...]

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July 2, 2007

A Conversation with Kei Miller Presented by The Caribbean Review of Books and The Reader’s Bookshop The Jamaican writer Kei Miller–whose short story collection The Fear of Stones was recently shortlisted for a regional Commonwealth Writers’ Prize–will read from his fiction and poems, and discuss his work with Caribbean Review of Books editor Nicholas Laughlin. [...]

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June 26, 2007

Links, links, links – At the ART:Jamaica blog, a review (anonymous) of the 2007 final-year show at the Edna Manley College in Kingston. – In the Stabroek News, an essay by Atticus De Caires Narain on the decline of old-time cinemas in Guyana, and a report by Al Creighton on the launch of two new [...]

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June 24, 2007

Books to travel with In my small bag with a change of clothes were my notebooks and my book for the trip…. What to read when you’re travelling by boat to Borneo? A House for Mr Biswas, says Paul Theroux. On a plane from Copenhagen to New York? Unburnable, suggests Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The UK [...]

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June 19, 2007

The CRB needs your help Dear readers, It’s now just over three years since The Caribbean Review of Books was launched with our May 2004 pilot issue. The front cover featured a lovely drawing by Mary Adam, the contents page promised reviews of books by V.S. Naipaul, Caryl Phillips, Ian McDonald, M.G. Smith, and four [...]

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June 18, 2007

“I ask myself that all the time” Founded in 2001 by three Jamaicans–novelist Colin Channer; poet, novelist, and scholar Kwame Dawes; and Justine Henzell, an ex-public-relations executive and daughter of the late novelist and filmmaker Perry Henzell (who directed the international film hit The Harder They Come)–Calabash now stands as the only literary festival intellectually [...]

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June 17, 2007

Weekend links – In the Stabroek News, Ian McDonald asks and tries to answer the question, what is a good education? – The Jamaica Gleaner Arts and Leisure section includes Mary Hanna’s review of Kenneth Bilby’s True-Born Maroons, and “Friday”, a short story by Melissa McKenzie. Meanwhile, the Jamaica Observer announces the new Kingston Edge [...]

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June 15, 2007

Nikolai Noel’s Scottish “diary” Nikolai Noel in his studio in Tanera Mor Trinidadian Nikolai Noel is one of twenty artists currently participating in the Tanera Mor International Artists Workshop (Cuban Jimmy Bonachea Guerra is the other Caribbean participant). At the workshop website, he’s been keeping a semi-blog-format artist’s diary, which so far includes images of [...]

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June 14, 2007

“If you’re going to smoke…” Though there are no Jamaican writers on the bill this year (Channer says that writers only get a chance to appear “when they’re ready”), there is a buzz of enthusiasm among the mainly Jamaican audience. People come from a range of age groups and social backgrounds–from teens in baggy skate [...]

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