PORT-LOUIS, Guadeloupe (May 20, 2010) — The SEMSAMAR development agency made a financial contribution here on Thursday to the 8th annual St. Martin Book Fair (June 3 – 5, 2010), said book fair coordinator Shujah Reiph. The directrice of SEMSAMAR, Marie Paul Beneluse (L) made the presentation to Reiph (R), who had traveled to the Guadeloupe commune to receive the cheque from Beneluse. “SEMSAMAR is about building the future and we thought that it is more than right for us to support an event such as the St. Martin Book Fair,” said Beneluse to Reiph, a leading St. Martin cultural activist and organizer. The opening ceremony of the three-day book fair takes place at the University of St. Martin, Philipsburg, on Thursday, June 3, at 8pm. The closing ceremony and main book launch will take place at the Public Library, Marigot, on Saturday, June 5, at 8pm, said Reiph. The Conscious Lyrics Foundation and House of Nehesi Nehesi Publishers organize the St. Martin Book Fair in collaboration with the St. Maarten Tourist Bureau, the Collectivity of St. Martin, and the University of St. Martin. (CLF photo)
CONFRIMED AUTHORS & WORKSHOP EXPERTS
8th Annual St. Martin Book Fair
Thursday, June 3 – Saturday, June 5, 2010
University of St. Martin, Philipsburg • Public Library, Marigot
St. Martin, Caribbean
Fabian Adekunle Badejo, is the author of Claude – A Portrait of Power (1989, 2007) and Salted Tongues – Modern Literature in St.Martin(2003). He wrote profiles for St. Martin Massive! A Snapshot on Popular Artists (2000) and served as a consultant on the book GEBE Through The Years – Power To Serve (2006). His paper, “Negritude in the Forgotten Territories: Lasana Mwanza Sekou and Aimé Césaire” was published in Negritude: Legacy and Present Relevance. Eds. Isabelle Constant and Kahiudi C. Mabana (2009). Badejo has produced concerts by kaisonian Mighty Dow and humorists/storytellers Paul Keens Douglas and Fernando Clark. He has directed plays, monologues and film documentaries in St. Martin and abroad and presented scholarly papers on the island’s literature at regional conferences. In 2003, Badejo conducted the “New Forms of Writing” course for HNP’s Creative Writing Program. Between 1989 and 2005, the former Nigerian diplomat was managing director/editor, publisher and news director respectively of The St. Maarten Guardian, St. Martin Business Week, andToday newspapers. Badejo is the producer/host of the long-running radio magazine Culture Time (PJD-2).
Christian Campbell is a Rhodes Scholar who received his Ph.D. at Duke University. This writer of Bahamian and Trinidadian heritage is a professor at the University of Toronto. His poetry and essays have been published widely in journals and anthologies such as Callaloo, Indiana Review, Wasafiri, Poetry London, PN Review, New Caribbean Poetry and New Poetries IV. Campbell’s work has been translated into Spanish in the anthology Poetas del Caribe Ingles. He has received grants and fellowships from Cave Canem, the Arvon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Fine Arts Work Center and the University of Birmingham. Running the Dusk, named a finalist for the Cave Canem Prize by Sonia Sanchez, was his first book.
Raphaël Confiant was born in 1951 in Martinique. Confiant studied political science and english at the University of Provence. The lecturer at the University of the French Antilles and Guiana, is the author of numerous academic essays and novels in Creole and French. He co-created the Créolité, where like many of his words, he explores the memory, culture, language and history of his country. The essays and novels of Confiant include Les Ténèbres extérieures, 2008, Kod Yanm, 1986, Eloge de la Créolité, 1989, Eau de Café, 1991, Aimé Césaire, une traversée paradoxale du siècle, 1993, Le Meurtre du Samedi-Gloria, 1997, Nuée Ardente, 2002, La Panse du Chacal, 2004, and Nègre Marron, 2006.
Carolyn Cooper is a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, where she teaches Caribbean, African, and African-American literature. She is the author of Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender, and the “Vulgar” Body of Jamaica Popular Culture (1993) and Sound Clash: Jamaica Dancehall Culture at Large. Dr. Cooper is the co-editor, with Alison Donnell, of the 2004 special issue of Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies on Jamaica Popular Culture; and co-editor with Eleanor Wint of Bob Marley: The Man & His Music (2003). Dr. Cooper is the founder and director of the Global Reggae Center in Jamaica.
Gérard M. Hunt is a retired high school teacher. He attended public school in his native St. Martin. Hunt continued his education in the USA and Canada. He taught French at Western Laval High School and at Chomedey Polyvalent High School in Laval, Quebec. Hunt also taught at Macdonald High School in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, and in St. Martin at Milton Peters College, the Lycée des Iles du Nord, and the Collège du Mont des Accords. He is the author of the forthcoming Desperate in Saint Martin – Notes on Guillaume Coppier.
Gérard Jadotte studied law and political science in Haïti and Canada. He is a university professor and director of the publishing houseEditions de l’Université d’Etat d’Haïti. After working as a consultant for various national and international institutions, he occupied the post of general secretary of the University of Notre Dame of Haïti (1999-2005). Prof. Jadotte was also the coordinator of the Technical Secretariat of the Commission that prepared the document for the National Strategy for Growth and the Reduction of Poverty. In collaboration with Cary Hector, he published Haïti et l’après Duvalier: Continuités et Ruptures (1991) and Le Carnaval de La Révolution de Duvalier à Aristide(2005).
Charles-henri Maricel-Baltus is a Guadeloupian poet and novelist. His first collection of poetry, Paradis terrestre (1992) was followed in 2006 by Face à la mort, the first of a trilogy, and La vies en face in 2009. His work explores the disfiguration of paradise from plagues, wars, pollution and famine, and his existential quest, cultural tolerance, which he hopes illustrate his life’s philosophy. He works with municipal libraries, primary schools and neighborhood associations to promote reading and writing. Maricel-Baltus organizes poetry competitions that build “intergenerational relationships between poets and aspiring poets.” The avid traveler’s 1980 trip to Haiti left an indelible mark on his life as has the Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy.
M. NourbeSe Philip, a poet, essayist, novelist and playwright, lives in Toronto. She has published five books of poetry, one novel and three collections of essays. Among her best-known published works are She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks, Looking for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, and Harriet’s Daughter. Her most recent work, Zong!, is a book-length poem which engages with ideas of the law, history and memory as they relate to the transAtlantic slave trade. A Fellow of the McDowell Colony and the Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy, Philip was awarded the Pushcart Prize (USA), the Casa de las Americas Prize (Cuba) for poetry, the Lawrence Foundation Prize (USA) for short fiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship (USA). In 1995 the Arts Foundation of Toronto recognized her work with its Writing and Publishing Award. In 1999, her play “Coups and Calypsos” was a Dora Award (Toronto) finalist.
Angelo Rombley, founder, Big Eye Opener Studios, Inc., award-winning senior graphics designer and digital artist. Rombley’s digital art has been exhibited at the Artists’ Corner, St. Martin and the New York State Museum, USA. He has worked on a number of DVDs for Woodslave Films, including GEBE Through The Years – 45th Anniversary (2005). The graduate of the International Fine Arts College mixed and produced the music for the audio CD The Salt Reaper – selected poems from the flats (2009).
Lasana M. Sekou, author of 13 books of poetry, monologues, and short stories. He is an advocate for the independence of St. Martin, which is a colony of the Netherlands and France. The St. Martin writer is considered one of the prolific Caribbean poets of his generation. Reviewers have compared Sekou’s poetry to the works of a range of poetic giants, from Aimé Césaire to Oswald Mtshali, from Kamau Brathwaite to Dylan Thomas, from e.e. cummings to Linton Kwesi Johnson but, writes Fergus in Love Labor Liberation in Sekou, “the voice that reaches us is sui generis, unique and Sekouesque.” His critically acclaimed The Salt Reaper – poems from the flats along with 37 Poems, Nativity, Brotherhood of the Spurs and Love Songs Make You Cry have been required reading at Caribbean, US and Canadian universities. Sekou has set his poetry to music in The Salt Reaper – selected poems from the flats (audio CD). He has presented papers and recited his poetry at cultural and literary conferences and festivals in the Caribbean, North and South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. The poetry of the award-winning author has been translated into Dutch, Spanish, French, German, Turkish and Chinese. Nativity/Nativité/Natividad is Sekou’s first trilingual book.
Verene A. Shepherd is a professor of social history at the University of the West Indies, Mona and a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society. In 2010, she was appointed to the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group of Experts on people of African descent, to represent the Caribbean and Latin America for the rest of the late Prof. Nettleford’s two-year term. Dr. Shepherd’s research interests are in Jamaican Economic History during slavery (especially the history of non-sugar activities), Migration and Diasporas, and Caribbean Women’s history; on which topics she has published and lectured widely. Among her publications are: Livestock, Sugar and Slavery: contested terrain in colonial Jamaica (2009); I Want to Disturb My Neighbour: Lectures on Slavery, Emancipation and Post-colonial Jamaica (2007), Maharanis Misery: Narratives of a Passage from India (2001), and Transients to Settlers: The Experience of Indians in Jamaica (1994). She is editor of Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom (2002) and Slavery without Sugar (2002). She is also co-author (with Prof. Hilary Beckles) of Liberties Lost: Caribbean Indigenous Societies and Slave Systems (2001), Freedoms Won ( 2004), Trading Souls(2007 and Saving Souls (2007).
Lori L. Tharps, co-author of the award-winning book, Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, is an assistant professor of journalism at Temple University. Her memoir, Kinky Gazpacho: Life, Love & Spain was listed in The Washington Post as one of the Best Books of 2008. Atria Books will release Tharps’ debut novel, Substitute Me, in August 2010. Tharps lives in Philadelphia with her husband and two children.
Rueben J. Thompson holds a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science. He is the project manager of Environmental Protection in the Caribbean’s Love the Lagoon Project. Thompson is also the vice president of the St. Maarten Pride Foundation and a founding board member of the Emilio Wilson Estate Foundation. A hard-working new generation environmentalist, his awards include: The 2009 Euan P. McFarlane Award for Outstanding Environmental Leadership in the Insular Caribbean; Today Newspaper’s “Man of the year” (2009); St. Martin’s Day honoree for contributions to the development of St. Maarten (2009); Crystal Pineapple Award for Outstanding Environmental Program; and the award for Outstanding Organization Contributing to the Environmental Awareness (2008). Thompson is one of the leading voices against the further land-filling and polluting of the historic Great Salt Pond.
Isidore “Mighty Dow” York is a kaisonian and steelpan maestro. He is the 1995 and 2005 St. Martin calypso king and the 1982 and 1983 roadmarch king. With some 20 musical recordings to his credit, Dow is probably still best known for his super 1986 hit “St. Maarten Rumba.” In 1987, he performed the rumba to over 100,000 people at the Festival de Música de1 Caribe, Cartagena, Colombia. In 1990, Dow’s rumba was nominated for “Best Song of the Year” in the Billboard-sponsored Premio lo Nuestro a la Música Latina. In 1991, he founded the Ebony Steel Orchestra Foundation and has since taught more than 200 students to play that essential Caribbean instrument, the steelpan. The book St. Martin Massive! A Snapshot on Popular Artists (2000), features Dow as one of the nation’s most popular artists at the turn of the century. In 2001, the music hall at the John Larmonie Center for Creative Arts was named in honor of Isidore “Mighty Dow” York. His annual pan concert remains a cultural highlight of the nation’s Christmas season.
The 8th annual St. Martin Book Fair is organized by
the Conscious Lyrics Foundation and House of Nehesi Nehesi Publishers
in collaboration with the St. Maarten Tourist Bureau the Collectivity of St. Martin, and the University of St. Martin.