Over 80 events will take place during the 2020 NGC Bocas Lit Fest from April 28-30. The festival will be fully in-person for the first time since 2019, at the National Library in Port of Spain, although it will still be streamed online.
Speaking at the media launch at the library on Abercromby Street on Wednesday, festival director Nicholas Laughlin said the event will feature 100 writers, speakers and performers from Trinidad and Tobago and around the world. The 2023 theme is What’s Your Story?
“The three days will feel like a week because they are packed with readings, discussions, performances, workshops, music, drama, ole mas, and even moko jumbies. It will celebrate words, stories, ideas, and the people who write, tell and read them.
"We are a free festival for everybody, and returning to an in-person format doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten our international audience who’ve gotten accustomed to seeing us online."
Laughlin said some of the featured writers will be international and local prize-winning authors Bernardine Evaristo, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Anthony Joseph, Breanne McIvor, Ayanna Lloyd Banwoo, and Kevin Jared Hosein. Life writing will receive a special focus with memoirs being presented by authors Ira Mathur, Elizabeth Montano and Barbara Jenkins. Two of TT’s literary icons, Samuel Selvon and Harold Sonny Ladoo. will be honoured, as well as Leroy “Black Stalin” Calliste.
[caption id="attachment_1005859" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Bocas Lit Fest Children's Festival manager Melvina Hazard speaks at the launch of the 13th edition of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest at the National Library, Port of Spain on Wednesday. Photo by Roger Jacob[/caption]
Laughlin said the three genre winners of the OCM Bocas Literary Prize will be announced on April 2, and the announcement of the winner will be on April 29. The First Citizens National Poetry Slam will again be the closing event of the festival and will be held at the Central Bank Auditorium.
Laughlin said the winner of the annual Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters was Prof Emerita Sandra Pouchet Paquet, scholar, academic and pioneering Caribbeanist, who will receive the award in-person at the festival.
Children’s Festival manager Melvina Hazard said the Children’s Storytelling Caravan will be going to ten venues around the country.
“This year’s theme is What’s Your Story? We have to ask ourselves how do we tell stories and how do we get others to tell theirs?
"For me, the underlying ideology of programming the children’s festival was about inclusion, allowing as many children and writers of children’s stories to be able to access platforms and opportunities to be able to tell their stories and to tell them in different ways.”
Some of the highlights of the children’s programming will be a panel featuring authors who write for children and children who write for children, workshops and panels on how to write for special needs children and how to get them to tell their stories, a storytelling room in the children’s lib
