Kicking off our 2024 literary event season is Lignum Vita Award-winning author Donna Hemans (Tea by the Sea), discussing her lyrical and layered new work, The House of Plain Truth. Inspired by Hemans’s family history, the novel follows Pearline, who returns to her childhood home in Jamaica after her father’s passing and learns her father’s puzzling deathbed wish: that she find her siblings—whom she hasn’t seen in 60 years—and discover the secret that tore her family apart. Maisy Card (author of These Ghosts Are Family, shortlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize) joins Hemans for a rich conversation on the novel, which Card describes as a “compelling family mystery and a moving story of generational healing and reconciliation, but also a profound portrait of the emotional aftermath of voluntary and forced migration.” After the conversation, Hemans will sign books.

Presented in partnership with the The Center for Fiction

*This event is in-person and livestreamed.

The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival and the Center for Fiction and the welcome Whiting Award-winning poet and author Safiya Sinclair (Cannibal) for the launch of How to Say Babylon. In this cathartic and captivating memoir written in dazzling prose, Sinclair tells the story of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing in Jamaica, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, and her journey to find her own voice as a woman and poet. Sinclair is joined in conversation by Tara Westover, author of Educated—her memoir about leaving her survivalist Mormon family in order to go to college. The two authors will discuss Sinclair’s urgent and intimate memoir, reckoning with tradition, culture and family, and finding one’s voice. After the conversation, Sinclair will sign and personalize books.

Presented in partnership with the Center for Fiction.

Safiya Sinclair

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of the poetry collection Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award in Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Cannibal was selected as one of the American Library Association’s Notable Books of the Year, was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Seamus Heaney First Book Award in the UK, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize.

Tara Westover

Tara Westover is an American historian and memoirist. Her first book, Educated, debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list, in hardcover, for more than two years. The book, a memoir of her upbringing in rural Idaho, was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the L.A. Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. To date, it has been translated into more than 45 languages. The New York Times named Educated one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, and the American Booksellers Association voted Educated the Nonfiction Book of the Year. For her staggering impact, Time magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2019. Westover holds a Ph.D. in intellectual history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 2019 she was the Rosenthal Writer in Residence at Harvard University. In 2023, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden.

The Art of Kalinda - Kalinda Collective x Idakeda Group

‘Mas is dance and fight’ So said the late great Black Indian masquerader Narrie Approo. No other energy reflects the connection between warriorhood and Carnival than the martial tradition of stick fighting or kalinda. Kalinda is a stick based martial tradition found in Trinidad and other parts of the Caribbean. As with Brazil’s capoeira, stick fighters were on the frontline of resistance against colonial authorities’ attempts to stamp out and criminalize African cultural forms in the post Emancipation period.

The Art of Kalinda workshop is a lecture demonstration exploring the history of stick fighting and the contemporary applications of these traditions to conflict resolution, restorative justice and self-reflection. The workshop is led by martial artist and chantwell, Keegan Taylor of Kalinda Collective and Attillah Springer of Idakeda Group, producers of Kambule the ritual re-enactment of the 1881 Canboulay Riots.

Guests: Attillah Springer x Keegan Taylor

Guest Authors: Lorraine Avila + Djeli Clark + Shakirah Bourne

Conversation Partner: Tanya Batson- Savage

Djeli and Lorraine are all writers of stories for young readers. In following their calling to write, they have chosen the path that takes them back to their familial lands, which sometimes stretches all the way back to Africa. They each mine the vast storehouses of their Caribbean ancestries for inspiration and invite young readers, generations removed from venerable lore and myth, to feast at a smorgasbord of narratives which often combines tribal wisdom, pre-modern civilisations and the supernatural. Young heroines battle for supremacy with ancient sea witches. School-aged students channel the spiritual practices of their ancestors, and guided by divine visions, save communities. Children are reluctant inductees into societies of magic where they find the confidence to fell giants of evil. Within each story is a rich confluence of contemporary issues and time-honoured wisdoms. There is a seamless interplay between the past and present, here and there, them and us.

Their writings highlight the invaluable insights orally passed down from our forebears yes, but more poignantly, provide a tool with which young readers (who themselves might be struggling with issues of identity) may fell the ugly giants of race, injustice, intolerance and invisibility. Their stories kindle interests in the folktales of the Caribbean and West Africa, foster pride and invite young readers into a new community in which they find belonging.

Writing for the Future is a joint conversation guided by the leading editor/publisher of children's stories in the Caribbean, Tanya Batson-Savage and proves that all that is needed for tomorrow are found in the stories of yesterday. Join us as we celebrate these writers whose uber modern stories are cultivating curiosity, respect and ancestral kinship with Caribbean culture and spirituality.

Guest Authors: Carol Mitchell

Conversation Partner: Oneika Phillips

Festival 5 is a true celebration of Caribbean culture, language and literature in diverse ways! This year, we are proud to be the official launch platform for What Start Bad A’ Mornin', the highly anticipated debut adult novel by Carol Mitchell, aptly named after an old Jamaican proverb which ends with a hollow resignation, “...cyah good a’ evening.”

Using three interwoven narratives spanning the United States, Trinidad, and Jamaica, Carol Mitchell's debut gives voice to an immigrant woman forced to confront her repressed memories of violent trauma. Only then can she discover what she is capable of when it comes to self-preservation and the protection of her family.

Carol Mitchell will be in conversation with Katia D. Ulysse, writer, educator and friend of the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival. Join us for birthday cake and sips as we celebrate milestone after milestone in the journey of Caribbean storytellers and this remarkable story.

Guest DJ - Michael Cooper Libre (TT)

Wajang Diskotheque is an evolving curatorial conversation among a group of creators and curators based in Belmont in Trinidad's capital Port of Spain, with various forms of outreach in Hamburg, New York and London. Wajang Diskotheque revolves around shared interests in music and expanding to include film, street art, conversation.

What’s a Wajang?

Wajang in Trini language refers to a woman with non-traditional ideas about her sexuality that could be described by some as immoral. The word expands to include any behaviour that challenges social norms.

The  wajang is the person who says what he or she feels, and remains unhindered by prevailing ideas of decency, order and respectability.

Wajang Diskotheque is a repurposing of the word wajang to mean culture disruptor.

Wajang Diskotheque sees the artist/maker as central to the disruption of cultural convention, through free interactions of music, film, public art and writing and an underlying interest in art as a tool for social justice.

Wajang Diskotheque is also concerned about documentation, archiving and the revival of lost or disappearing forms of cultural production.

Attillah Springer in conversation Lauren Frances-Sharma

IBTHOM by Wajang Discotheque is a music-centered interview in which artists discuss their work and favorite pieces of music. It takes its name from the lyric book of the late great Winston Bailey, the Shadow. It is a different take on the long running BBC Radio Series ‘Desert Island Discs’, a music centred interview in which artists, scientists, thinkers are castaway to a deserted island and asked to take along some of their prized pieces of music to accompany them on their journey.

‘I Belong to the House of Music’ imagines that the island is not deserted and attempts to shape another conversation about how the island's sounds affect the person who finds himself at this place.

Lauren and Roberto are brilliant writers with Caribbean roots whose stories and poetry capture the nuances of the dichotomy of the Caribbean-American experience, pay homage to ancestral roots and connections, and interrogate the connection between blackness within its many diasporas.

Hailing from distinctly different language territories in the Caribbean, we are excited to hear of how the indigenous sounds of their Mother cultures have influenced their creative consciousness.

Proudly co-presented with the Center for Fiction and the Wajang Discotheque for the 5th consecutive year!

Guest Authors: Donna Hemans + Maisy Card + Cherie Jones

Conversation Partner: Abby Ria Charles

It is every writer's dream to have a hit story. To finally arrive at the intersection of when a published novel finds massive success. Fortunes change, prospects appear brighter, the future can scarcely be better. Every writer desires that day. What we don't talk about enough, however, is what life is really like in the wake of a highly triumphant novel. What does a writer do, say and feel in the gloamy clearing post pub-season hype.

On that isthmus conjoining yesterday's triumphs and tomorrow's promise. In Between Novels is an intimate conversation about the less talked about aspects of a writing career. Cherie, Donna and Maisy are three award-winning Caribbean women writers whose books were released during the COVID19-pandemic to considerable acclaim. Three years later, we'll ask them questions like, 'What comes next?',  'Do you feel like a captive to your earlier success?', 'How soon is too soon to expect new work?' What's life really like In Between Novels?

Guest Authors: Geoffrey Philp + Iyaba Ibo Mandingo + Enzo Surin + Saida Agostini Bostic + Roberto Carlos Garcia

Conversation Partner: Tanya Batson-Savage + Attillah Springer

Music by: Cooper Libre

Laureates Of the Caribbean is a foot-stomping, hand-clapping, finger-snapping inducing gayelle where poetry is the bois. It is the festival's highest commendation to our storytellers who weave words in metaphor and feeling into stanza. Laureates is the lion who does not roar in pentameter; is how we make love with words, is how we fight when the weapons of our warfare are the one-drop and dubstep…is the peculiar kinda way we twist our pain into a passionate lyrical dance to a song that plays to the rhythm that beats in a Caribbean heart only.

As the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival’s only ode to the oral tradition of the Caribbean, this year at Festival 5 we are shaking the four corners of Caribbean civilisation to bring the best poets of our time to Brooklyn in a unique blend of verse, music, poetry and spoken word.

Guest Authors: Kevin Jared Hosein + Roland Watson-Grant + Jonathan Escoffery

Conversation Partner: Andre Bagoo

A literary exploration of norms, dynamics, relationships, and rites of passage of Caribbean masculinity through the selected works of three (3) award-winning male writers resident in different outposts of the Caribbean civilization and settlement.

Led in conversation by poet and essayist, Andre Bagoo, Bad Man Doh Cry is expected, much in the manner of the letters of these writers, to confront social assumptions about race, masculinity, sexuality and how immigrant communities concurrently reinforce and rebuff ideas of heritage and aspirations of social mobility.

This conversation is also expected to provide a rich opportunity to observe the prismatic nature of Caribbean masculinity - what with the panel being split between residency in Caribbean and the United States, living as it were, as twin selves of the Caribbean identity. Jonathan is a second-generation immigrant in the United States while Roland, Andre and Kevin are writers currently domiciled in Jamaica and Trinidad respectively.

Guest Authors: Claire Jimenez + Melissa Coss Aquino + Cleyvis Natera

Conversation Partner: Aisha Cort

Three modern Latina writers gather to discuss how their writings have opened the lid on the unsaid and sometimes painful histories and lore present in families. Together, their stories help challenge the long-held expectations by their communities to keep these secrets.

Individually and collectively, their stories wrestle with generational silences, the thoughts and experiences we often keep to ourselves. If there is a clear theme in their literature, it is that appearances are not always what they seem. Their characters hold our hands as we, too, consider situations where we thought we knew someone until, suddenly, we discover something about them that we would have never imagined. Their stories lead us to consider fresh outcomes if openness instead of secrets was encouraged and cultivated.

The writers on this panel, Cleyvis, Melissa and Claire, have made about-turns on this tradition of reticence, becoming instead, the gatekeepers of a new tradition - of one that embraces disclosure, openness and light.

Guest Author: Elizabeth Nunez

Conversation Partner: Lauren Francis-Sharma

Join us for the film screening of 5 Minutes With Elizabeth Nunez, an original BCLF short film series celebrating a selection of novels by Elizabeth Nunez. In these candid conversations beautifully shot in the quiet comfort of her home in Long Island, New York, Nunez walks us through the creative inputs of five (5) of her most celebrated novels. Candid and sometimes deeply personal, she engages in a process of reflection, deep insight and shares invaluable insights into the historical and political cultures of the eras of her writing. In her characteristic anecdotal way, Nunez also offers a rare and beautiful insight into her own process of becoming and reckoning - as wife, mother, writer, feminist, immigrant and black woman. 

In these 5 short films, whether viewed as a stand-alone episode or enjoyed as a collection, Elizabeth Nunez does a compelling job of creating for the viewer, the unmistakable impression that she is and has been, the quintessential Caribbean-American writer.

Guest Authors: Camille Hernandez-Ramdwar + Vanessa Walters + Soraya Palmer

Conversation Partner: Sharma Taylor

Caribbean literature is all-encompassing, spanning generations, genres, space and place. Through the works of the writers on this panel, we explore the complexity of the Caribbean story. As a robust repository of histories and a wealth of human experiences, the Caribbean canon is as inclusive as it is diverse.

Through its treatment of universally-relevant themes about the human condition and because of its perpetual willingness to confront the muted, audacious, violent and (often) painful, Caribbean literature (and its writers) bears a remarkable capacity to point the way forward in this increasingly turbulent world, much in the way that a pinprick of light shines hope in cavernous darkness.