News Releases

Scott and Shakespeare shake up UWI’s Campus Literature Week

For Release Upon Receipt - March 11, 2016

St. Augustine


ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago. March 11, 2016 – Celebrated prize-winning Caribbean novelist, short-story writer and current Writer-in-Residence Lawrence Scott will be featured at The University of the West Indies (UWI) 18th Annual Campus Literature Week which runs from March 14 to 18. Scott will take the spotlight at the Evening Gala Ceremony which also commemorates the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.   

The Gala, which takes place at 7pm on Friday March 18 at The UWI’s Centre for Language Learning Auditorium, will also feature students from the Department of Cultural and Festival Arts (DCFA) who will perform an excerpt from one of Shakespeare’s best known plays, Much Ado about Nothing. There will also be a poster exhibition about Shakespeare’s influence in the Caribbean.  

Organised by the Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies, the Campus Literature Week will feature daily noontime readings (noon to 1.30pm) by a variety of authors including poets and spoken word artists; past and present Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing students; UWI Staff and Lecturers and writers who have been showcased at the OCM Bocas Lit Fest such as Commonwealth Short Story winners  Kevin Hosein (2015) and Sharon Millar (2013), whose book The Whale House and Other Stories has been longlisted for the 2016 OCM Bocas Fiction Prize.  

Scott was previously a Writer-in-Residence for Campus Literature Week in 2004 and is the recipient of NALIS Lifetime Literary Award for his “significant contribution to the development of Trinidad and Tobago’s Literature.”  When asked about how he felt about being this year’s Writer-in-Residence, Scott responded, “I like UWI, I’ve known Professor Aiyejina, Funso (Former UWI St. Augustine Campus’ Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education and current Professor Emeritus at The UWI) for about 40 years… and as young aspiring writers we met and it’s very nice to come back and work with him. When you’re away you kind of want to come back and work with the students rather than visiting and looking at the landscape.  UWI has been very generous with me.” 

Scott’s work has been awarded and short-listed for Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, Best Book and Best First Book in Canada & the Caribbean, and also the Tom-Gallon Short-Story Award. He was nominated three times for The International Impac Dublin Literary Award, and he was once Long-Listed for The Whitbread Prize and The Booker Prize. His work has been read on the BBC and he has been a past judge for the Commonwealth Short-Story Competition, the Small Axe Short Fiction Award, and the 2015 Anglophone judge of the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Association des Ecrivains de la Caraïbe from the Congrès des Ecrivains de la Caraïbe, Guadeloupe. His poetry has been anthologised in Europe and the Caribbean; and he has been a Senior Research Fellow of The Academy for Arts, Letters, Culture and Public affairs at The University of Trinidad & Tobago (UTT). His last collection of short stories, published in 2015 by Papillote Press is titled Leaving by Plane Swimming Back Underwater.  

All readings during Campus Literature Week are free and open to the public.  No RSVPs are required. The dress code for the Gala ceremony is elegantly casual and refreshments will be provided.  For further information, please contact Ms. Adel Bain at 662-2002 ext. 83028 or email Adel.Bain@sta.uwi.edu. 

 

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About The UWI

Since its inception in 1948, The University of the West Indies (UWI) has evolved from a fledgling college in Jamaica with 33 students to a full-fledged, regional University with well over 40,000 students. Today, UWI is the largest, most longstanding higher education provider in the Commonwealth Caribbean, with four campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Open Campus. The UWI has faculty and students from more than 40 countries and collaborative links with 160 universities globally; it offers undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology and Social Sciences. UWI’s seven priority focal areas are linked closely to the priorities identified by CARICOM and take into account such over-arching areas of concern to the region as environmental issues, health and wellness, gender equity and the critical importance of innovation. Website: http://www.uwi.edu/

 

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

 

 

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