Anguilla Lit Fest: A Literary Jollification, held May 24-28, 2012 on the beautiful Caribbean Island of Anguilla

There are advantages to those times when  – despite your best intentions – you find yourself unable to complete your posts about an event until more than a month after it is over. First, you get to take a little break in the reality you have since resumed to re-immerse yourself in the pleasures of the experience— reflecting on events that you had almost forgotten about already, and thinking again about the eloquent, talented and friendly people that you met.

Distance and time also distill your memories, allowing you to discover which of them are likely to remain most strongly with you into the future – some of which have, indeed, already provided grist for thought at unexpected moments in the middle of your busy daily life.

In the case of my attendance at Anguilla’s first annual (I hope: see note below) Lit Fest, amid a host of jewel-like memories of warm evenings, Caribbean vistas, elegant wine-and cheese receptions, exotic dinners, intriguing cultural presentations, and stimulating conversations, four sessions in particular give me great pleasure to recall:

• Terry McMillan, author of How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Waiting to Exhale, and several other books (and honorary patron of the LitFest), spoke at lunch on the second day of the festival on the topic, So You Want to be a Bestselling Author? The Real Deal. The points Terry offered to new writers included these (in no particular order): 1) true stories of things that “really happened” to you are not as interesting to other people as you think they are –
  

  Terry McMillan luncheon talk

  they must be given a dramatic structure in order to become good fiction (as an extension of this point, Terry pointed out that her own novels are not autobiographical. They may be similar to what really happened to her, but they have been transformed into fiction); 2) don’t write for other people (i.e., to sell, or to win awards) – write for yourself. Similarly, do not let what the critics say bother you or affect your future work – just keep writing for yourself; 3) fiction writers need to know many, many more details about their characters than they will ever tell their readers; 4) don’t edit while you write; 5) write the way your characters would speak, not to impress your audience – nobody cares how smart you are; 6) stop at the end of the writing day mid-sentence or mid-paragraph so that you don’t have to face a blank page the next day, but can resume your story in the middle of an interesting scene; 7) don’t worry about how the story is going to turn out or what is going to happen next – just write (Terry says she doesn’t like writing screenplays because she knows how everything is going to turn out, which is boh-ring); 8) writing is a journey. Enjoy it! (Note: Terry also did a Master Class called “Honing Your Gift” on Saturday morning. I arrived just as it was concluding and the audience response was overwhelmingly positive. I wish I’d heard it all. If any readers here were there, please add a comment and give us a taste of what she said that day. To the rest: don’t ever pass up an opportunity to listen to Terry McMillan talk about writing – or anything. She’s great!);

• On the last evening of the Festival David Carty, historian, author, and producer of the documentary film Nuttin Bafflin (“a small community of 5000 former slaves on a tiny island in the North Eastern Caribbean mold the accidents of history with their struggle
  

  Upstairs at Davida’s, the restaurant where the final evening’s session was held

  for survival and develop a unique brand of boat racing practiced nowhere else on earth”) gave a fascinating and often amusing history of Anguilla and its talented boat-builders. Anguillians have for centuries been known around the world for their skills and talents atbuilding boats, and are fanatical boat racers as a consequence. You can get a sample of Carty’s wonderfully sincere, knowledgeable, intelligent and somehow also light-hearted storytelling style in this video on YouTube;

• The second and final panel in which I participated was entitled Artists on the Page. It was moderated by the gracious and eloquent Allison Samuels, a senior writer for Newsweek/Daily Beast and author of What Would Michelle Do: A Modern-Day Guide to Living with Substance and Style. The panel featured, in addition to myself, the enthusiastic and inspiring performer-authors Hill Harper and Sheryl Lee Ralph. We all agreed that you have to make time in your life to fit the writing in, no matter what else you are doing (Hill says he writes on tv and movie sets while he’s waiting for his scenes), and that writing provides a way of interpreting (and sometimes escaping from) the vicissitudes of life. Both Hill (e.g., The Wealth Cure: Putting Money in its Place) and Sheryl (Redefining Diva: Life Lessons From The Original Dreamgirl) have written books in which they have drawn from their own experiences, challenges and triumphs to inspire and motivate readers;

• Last but certainly not least, Randall Robinson was an absolute joy to listen to. He spoke of major issues that face African Americans and those living in the Diaspora today in such a knowledgeable and eloquent way that it became for all of us listening a call to action… although I am not sure what I as an overly white Canadian can do to
  

  Randall Robinson speaks at the Thought Leaders’ Luncheon. Topic, “We Are One: Writing About The Diaspora”

  help, except listen, learn, hope to understand, and remain open to opportunities to help other people to understand. Randall Robinson is so well spoken and gentle in his delivery (you can see a fine example here, at a book launch at Hue-Man Books in NYC, where he delivers a mesmerizing first-hand account of the coup that removed Jean-Bertrand Aristide from Haiti in 2004, and the Haitian history that provides context for that event) but you know and hear that he is outraged and determined in his heart. He loves his people and – despite the gains that were made in the U.S. during the Civil Rights movement – he despairs at the current portrayal in the media of so many African Americans as dysfunctional parents, drug addicts and criminals. Among the points he made that were very interesting to me because I’d never thought of them before was this: he talked about how in the community where he’d grown up, the teachers and lawyers and preachers and store-keepers lived across the street from and next door to the prostitutes, low-wage workers, and the unemployed. When integration began, it was those who were professionals and had money who moved “uptown,” leaving the less educated and the poor behind. This phenomenon, repeated across the U.S., has contributed to the current situation where the “black communities” today tend to be poor areas with major socio-economic problems. That is just one example of the many insights I gained from listening to Randall’s talks, and I am looking forward to reading his novel, Makeda – which he said he wrote in part to address the fact that one of the major losses experienced by African Americans during slavery was their history. (The New York Journal of Books said, “Makeda is beyond ambitious and imaginative . . . well written and powerful, with an ending that is equal parts tragic and romantic in nature . . . a breathtaking revelation, weighted with romance and lovely passionate prose.”) Update Josveek Huligar has posted this clip from Randall Robinson’s Anguilla writing workshop on YouTube.

There are other people I want to talk about more in future who I met at the Lit Fest in Anguilla, and I hope to do profiles of them and their books. In the meantime, I only wish that more of you could have attended. Even though I have been writing fiction for more than thirty years now, it left me feeling fresh and new and eager to get back to my fiction. And it was no passing whim: more than a month later, thinking about that weekend still provides me with real motivation to get back to work on my next novel.

Mary and Terry, final evening

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(Note re: the “first-annual-ness” of the Anguilla Lit Fest – while everyone who attended would, I believe, love to see this become an annual event, it takes a lot of work and a lot of money to put on a splendiferous literary festival like this one was, and Anguilla is a small island with a limited number of volunteers. So keep your fingers crossed — or, if you’re in the region, contact the Anguilla Tourist Board and see if there is anything you can do to help.

Thanks to Gerald A. Riskin for files and photos

Anguilla from the air, en route back to St. Maarten and thence to Miami and Toronto.

On the beach, after the festival was over. Anguilla.