Events Releases

Celebrating A Renaissance of Local Writers, The UWI hosts 25th Campus Literature Week

For Release Upon Receipt - June 13, 2023

St. Augustine


 ST. AUGUSTINE, Trinidad and Tobago. Tuesday, June 13, 2023– The month of March was dedicated to the celebration of local writers at Campus Literature Week organized by students of The University of the West Indies (The UWI) St Augustine Campus, Celebrating Local Writers was hosted from Monday 01st March 2023 to Friday 31st March 2023. The event was the 25th instalment of the Campus Literature Week (CLW). Each year students of the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing programme, Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication studies in The UWI’s Faculty of Humanities and Education, organize a month-long series of lunchtime reading sessions featuring Readers from the Campus and the wider writing community in Trinidad and Tobago.

This year’s Featured Reader was award-winning writer Breanne Mc Ivor. Mc Ivor, whose short story collection, Where There Are Monsters, was published in 2019 by Peepal press while her debut novel, The God Of Good Looks, was released in May in North America and Trinidad and Tobago by William Morrow/HarperCollins, and in June in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth by Fig Tree/Penguin Random House.  A gala event on March 31st saw Mc Ivor speaking on the topic, ‘Writing in the Modern Caribbean’.

The reading sessions showcased staff and students of The UWI St. Augustine Campus, and included Ghanaian and British author Nii Ayikwei Parkes who held conversations with Earl Lovelace, Trinidad and Tobago novelist, journalist, playwright and short story writer. Merle Hodge, Trinidadian novelist, literary critic and Senior Lecturer, Department of Liberal Arts, Faculty of Humanities and Education, West Indian and African Diaspora Literature. Laura Ann Phillips, MFA student also engaged in conversation with British/Jamaican author Leone Ross.

Some readings were dedicated to the lives of those lost, such as Emeritus Professor Gordon Rohler, acclaimed essayist, author, cultural analyst and calypso expert; Dr. Louis Regis, inspiring teacher, leading expert on calypso and author; Dr. Giselle Rampaul, literary scholar, leading expert in the region on Caribbean re-readings of Shakespeare; and Jennifer Rahim, fiction writer, poet, and literary critic.

For more information and to view an archive of the 25th Campus Literature Week recorded daily readings click here: https://sta.uwi.edu/fhe/dlcc/past-events 

END 

About The University of the West Indies 

The UWI has been and continues to be a pivotal force in every aspect of Caribbean development; residing at the centre of all efforts to improve the well-being of people across the region. 

From a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948, The UWI is today an internationally respected, global university with near 50,000 students and five campuses: Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago, Cave Hill in Barbados, Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda and its Open Campus, and 10 global centres in partnership with universities in North America, Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe. 

The UWI offers over 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Culture, Creative and Performing Arts, Food and Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities and Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science and Technology, Social Sciences, and Sport. As the Caribbean’s leading university, it possesses the largest pool of Caribbean intellect and expertise committed to confronting the critical issues of our region and wider world. 

The UWI has been consistently ranked among the top universities globally by the most reputable ranking agency, Times Higher Education (THE). In the latest World University Rankings 2022, released in September 2021, The UWI moved up an impressive 94 places from last year. In the current global field of some 30,000 universities and elite research institutes, The UWI stands among the top 1.5%. 

The UWI is the only Caribbean-based university to make the prestigious lists since its debut in the rankings in 2018. In addition to its leading position in the Caribbean, it is also in the top 20 for Latin America and the Caribbean and the top 100 global Golden Age universities (between 50 and 80 years old).  The UWI is also featured among the leading universities on THE’s Impact Rankings for its response to the world’s biggest concerns, outlined in the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including Good Health and Wellbeing; Gender Equality and Climate Action. 

For more, visit www.uwi.edu.

 

Contact