I have written the first draft of the article describing the publishing panel at the LitFest in Anguilla last weekend, an event that seems somewhat seminal to me – situated as it was amid the mudslide of turmoil that surrounds the impact of electronic technology on our industry. So it is taking me a while to write that post. But today did not seem like the right day to be polishing sentences. After several days of relative isolation from the news online, and the shock of coming back to it, I felt I needed to stop and think about the bigger picture for a moment.
Today in Seattle, a gunman killed five people and himself. Here in Toronto, a young man shot another at a subway station after an altercation on the train. These are just two senseless incidents of violence out of thousands I could report from today’s headlines alone that have not only affected the hearts and minds of those immediately concerned, but aroused the horror of bystanders and online readers and viewers everywhere.
A few days ago, a drugged-up man in Miami ate the face off another man, and was shot to death by police on camera. A man in Montreal killed another man, chopped him up, put his torso in a suitcase and a few of his other body parts in packages and mailed them to innocent recipients: the murder scene is now open for public viewing. A couple in England has been charged with setting fire to their home and killing their six children. A young woman in Sudan is about to be stoned to death for adultery.
It makes me wonder if there is any justification at all for sitting around and writing stories. We should be doing something more constructive. Jackie Chan is starting to look like the only sane person in the news.
On the other hand, the eminent and distinguished speakers at the conference last weekend seemed to be fairly unanimous that it is the loss of story/heritage that leads to a lot of this insanity, drug abuse, and senseless violence. We must give people back their voices, and we must tell our stories. This new publishing era is certainly facilitating that.
But I think at the very least the endless endless horrific headlines should make us, as writers, think about our ethical responsibility to push away the chaos, instead of adding to it.
Along with talent, growing expertise at writing, the universal ability to publish whatever we want to say, and our increasingly fevered and competitive efforts to reach (i.e., capture) audiences, comes responsibility. That’s all I’m saying here.
Okay, so it’s not really Day One any more. I admit it. The whole conference is over. But since Anguilla’s first lit fest really got underway on Friday morning at the magnificent Paradise Cove Resort, I’ve been going, going, going – which left no time for blogging, blogging, blogging. On both Friday and Saturday, I had a couple of hours off each afternoon, and I came back to my room planning to take a nap before dinner because I was too tired to move. But I could not nap: my mind was going a thousand miles a minute. That’s the sign of a great literary festival and conference.
I’m going to tell you about all the sessions and receptions I attended (and show you pictures) but it’s probably going to take me all week or even longer, mostly because if I write about more than one session at a time, the post will be too long. Plus there were a few people who weren’t even on the agenda who knocked me flat, and I want to tell you about them, too. I feel like this festival has changed something deep inside me and I hope I can convey some of the magic to you: one session at a time. (You can subscribe to this blog if you want an email when the next posts are up.)
Friday morning’s Rise and Shine breakfast session featured three readers: Lasana Sekou, Hill Harper and Sheryl Lee Ralph.
Lasana Sekou is a poet and prose writer from St. Martin who I hope will come and read in Toronto (and elsewhere in Canada) someday (he’s been on reading lists at York and Keyano College, so he is almost a Canadian already). Lasana has published ten books of poetry, monologues and short stories, and he is a performance poet par excellence. He has been translated into Spanish, Dutch and German and has won numerous awards – including a knighthood from the Dutch Kingdom. Clearly indefatigable, he is also the driving force behind the St. Martin House of Nehesi Publishers and an advocate for St. Martin independence.
First, Lasana read a short piece of prose (claiming that it was too early in the morning to be a poet) but then he launched into the poem that is also featured in this YouTube video; entitled “Visit and Fellowship II” (“i&i in eternal seeding time”), it is from his book The Salt Reaper: Songs from the Flats:
After that reading, everybody was not only wide awake but had fires in their bellies, as I am sure you can imagine. (Lasana told me later that the YouTube performance had been at a literary festival in Colombia – the Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín – which brought out such huge crowds that it blew away the minds of the presenters as it must have also done the attendees.)
Hill Harper was up next. He talked about what drove him to write Letters to a Young Brother: Manifest Your Destiny, which was inspired by Ranier Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet(which I agree that everyone who is the least bit interested in writing anything – or just living a full life – should read). Hill Harper is not just another pretty face. He is a very bright man – he attended Harvard Law School with a guy named Barack Obama. He found that when he was doing talks as a part of his CSI:NY work, young black men would come up to him afterwards and tell him they were inspired by him, and they would tell him some of their challenges and ask him for advice. He also got thousands of emails from black youth. He began to realize that the questions were falling into categories, and that is when he began to create the outline for his first book.
Hill’s book might have been written for young black men, but it will inspire people of all ages, colours and creeds. After listening to his first chapter, which was about believing in yourself but learning from your forebears (“You are the perfect product of 15 billion years of evolution …. I respect that and you should too. Let go of those other people’s voices in your head … anybody who ever said your dreams were not possible”), which I was mentally applying to the writing process, I wanted nothing more than to find a pen and paper and get to work on my next book.
Sheryl Lee Ralph added a tasty and compelling garnish to this literary power breakfast when she spoke to the inner diva in all of us and read from her memoir, Redefining Diva: Life Lessons From The Original Dream Girl. An actor, singer and activist as well as a writer (and an avid tweeter with 20,500 followers), Sheryl Lee was the original Deena Jones in Broadway’s production of Dreamgirls, where her performance earned her a Tony for Best Actress. The Kirkus Review calls her book “an engrossing story of a woman who challenged Hollywood and its limited roles for black women.”
Sheryl Lee explained that to her, DIVA is an acronym for “Divine, Inspired, Victorious and Anointed,” and she believes that we should use our diva power for good instead of evil. She is an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and creator of The Diva Foundation for AIDS/HIV Awareness.
Here’s one passage from her funny and moving reading: “My kind of Diva is woman enough to love herself to the very core of her being… She respects herself and those around her. She is a role model. My kind of Diva is changing the world in big and small ways. And yes, she looks good doing it!”
Sheryl Lee is a firecracker, and after her reading, we were ready to rip into the first session of the festival, “Writing is Just the Beginning: The New Publishing Rules.” Which I will tell you about in the next post. :)
On Thursday afternoon, many of the authors from the Anguilla Lit Fest met with school children from Anguilla to talk about our experiences as writers, and to answer their questions. The sessions were held at the Anguilla Library, and students were bused or walked to the site from various schools on the island. The students had been well prepared for their encounters — one girl in my group had even prepared an eloquent thank you speech which she delivered at the conclusion of my presentation.
I was most impressed with the students, their teachers, and the librarians — who had created displays on the bulletin boards about each writer and his/her books. Another great event!
Actor/author Hill Harper fires up a group of primary school children with enthusiasm for reading and writing during one of the Anguilla Lit Fest student-author sessions
Writers Terry MacMillan and Hill Harper encourage a young Anguillian student who has questions about writing. Malaika Adero, Vice President and Senior Editor, Simon and Shuster Atria Books, and library staff look on.
Last evening the owners of the magnificent Ultimacy Villa Retreat on Anguilla’s north shore hosted a reception for the organizing committee, speakers and guests at Anguilla’s First Lit Fest, which officially starts today.
I sat at a table with Allison Samuels, award-winning Newsweek writer and author of What Would Michelle Do, and actress, singer, activist and author Sheryl Lee Ralph, along with several other interesting Anguillians and visitors. I listened with great interest to a passionate conversation about television portrayal of black women in America and black female role models in general, and learned a lot, but then I was able to throw in a thought or two of my own when the exchange expanded to include movies and television in general and gradually dissolved into efforts to remember the titles of various ancient and recent shows and films and actors who’d been in them — such as the name of the woman who played the daughter of Bea Arthur on Maude (Adrienne Barbeau) and who starred with Ryan Gosling in Crazy, Stupid Love (Steve Carell).
I also had the privilege to talk to Marva Allen of the famous Hue-Man Bookstore in NYC, and btw, she highly recommends the new book by past US poet laureate Rita Dove.
The live music was fantastic. The band is Anguillian but I’m sure they will be heard far beyond these shores before long. They are called British Dependency. Here’s a sample:
Everyone here is warm, welcoming and friendly, and all of us are excited about this fantastic event that they have put on for the next three days.
This afternoon we’re off to talk to students from Anguilla schools about writing as part of the Champion Literacy initiative.
I have arrived on the beautiful island of Anguilla, where I have been staying with friends for a few days – getting some work done for clients while enjoying the tropical breezes.
The first session of the Anguilla Lit Fest: A Jollification is tonight — a reception/meet and greet for the presenters/authors and the organizing committee. I am looking forward to meeting all of the people who have spent so many months putting this together on behalf of the Anguilla Tourist Board, and to chatting with my fellow presenters, who include:
Terry McMillan, author of Waiting to Exhale, Stella Got Her Groove Back, and several other books. Great website here.
Randall Robinson, lawyer, activist and author of (among several other books) The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President and the novel MAKEDA. Here’s his website.
Hill Harper. Best known as an actor on CSI:NY, Harper has a law degree from Harvard and is also the author of Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny, Letters to a Young Sister: DeFINE Your Destiny and several other books, and creator of the Manifest Your Destiny foundation.
I am honoured to have been invited to be a panelist at
Anguilla’s First Ever Literary Arts Festival: A Jollification..
The guest speakers include:
Hill Harper, Author/Actor
Terry McMillan, Author/Professor
Randall Robinson, Author
Malaika Adero, Author/Publisher
Crystal McCrary, Author/Editor
Lasana Sekou, Author/Publisher
Sheryl Lee Ralph, Author/Actress
David Carty, Historian
Amy Berkower, Author, Agent (USA/Anguilla)
et moi
The Militant Writer 
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