News Releases

UWI CCFA and Cropper Foundation host Caribbean writers workshop

For Release Upon Receipt - September 6, 2007

St. Augustine


The University of the West Indies (UWI), Centre for Creative & Festival Arts (CCFA), in partnership with The Cropper Foundation is hosting the 5th Caribbean Creative Writers’ Residential Workshop. The Cropper Foundation, a not-for-profit philanthropic organisation committed to Caribbean development, has sponsored the Caribbean Residential Creative Writers Workshops for four years.

The Workshop will take place in Trinidad and Tobago from June 30th to July 31st, 2008, and will focus on fiction, playwriting and poetry. Participants will engage with published authors and professionals from the publishing industry, as well as speakers from a variety of other disciplines including History, Culture and Political Science.

A maximum of fifteen participants will be selected for the 2008 Workshop, which is the fifth in the series which started in 2000. Applicants 20 years and above are invited to submit application forms and samples of their writing (five pages only) no later than Thursday 15 November, 2007 to “Writers Workshop, Centre for Creative & Festival Arts, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad”. Works of prose fiction, playwriting or poetry, either published or unpublished, will be considered for this workshop. The moderators will be novelist Dr Merle Hodge, author of Crick, Crack Monkey and For the Life of Laetitia, Professor Funso Aiyejina, winner of the 2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa) for The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories. Dr Hodge and Prof. Aiyejina are lecturers at The UWI Faculty of Humanities and Education, Department of Liberal Arts.The Workshops are a part of The Cropper Foundation's effort to encourage new Caribbean literary voices by providing practical advice on the craft of writing.  Writers from Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Commonwealth of Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Caribbean Diaspora (Canada, USA, France, and UK) have competed to take part in these workshops, which are  The Cropper Foundation seeks to contribute to the development of the Caribbean on many levels.

From the participants of this workshop series, Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming (Bahamas) and Lenworth Burke (Jamaica) went on to win the Commonwealth Short Story Competition and the Jamaica Observer's Annual Fiction Award respectively. Ruel Johnson (Guyana) has won the Guyana Literature Prize 2003. A number of Trinidadians have also blossomed: Krishna Ramsumair has published a number of short stories in local and international journals;  Robert has received a Trinidad Guardian Writer of the Month award, as well as an EMA 2003 Green Leaf Award for journalism; and Tiphani Yanique is now an editor with Calabash and Story Quarterly.

For application forms or further information, please call Dr Dani Lyndersay or Ms Marissa Brooks at the UWI Centre for Creative and Festival Arts: (868) 662 2002. Ext. 3539 (Tel.); 663 2222 (Fax); or mbrooks@fhe.uwi.tt  (Subject: “2008 Writers' workshop”).

Contact

  • Dr Dani Lyndersay or Ms Marissa Brooks

  • Faculty/Department

    Faculty of Social Sciences
    Centre for Creative and Festival Arts

  • Tel.: (868) 662 2002. Ext. 3539
  • Email: mbrooks@fhe.uwi.tt