By: Staff Writer
May 10, 2022
The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF) launched its inaugural “Support Caribbean Writers Tour” last month with OCM Bocas Prize winner as the headline storyteller.
Mellany Paynter, director of operations for the BCLF, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that the artists that sign up to this year’s festival in September can take advantage of “Support Caribbean Writers Tour” organised by the BCLF, where they would have the opportunity to showcase themselves on the road to different venues in New York and Washington D.C..
Ms Paynter also said: “We did a launch recently last month at a local venue in Brooklyn, it almost eclipses the local rum shop but the atmosphere gives you that kind of vibe like its outside under trees.”
The launch hosted Trinidadian, Celeste Mohammed the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature winner for 2022 for her book, “Pleasantview.”
All of this is leading up to the BCLF this coming September 9-11, where Ms Paynter said: “For the three day festival we assemble at different venues in Brooklyn and what happens is that we just host different events, sometimes three events a day depending on what the actual plan is for that year.”
She also said: “We have grown in terms of the following and in terms of the response and in terms of the request from writers in the Caribbean diaspora. People know who we are now, people know our name and people know that we are here for them and are representing them.”
There is more to the BCLF as it also features a short-story contest during the three day event too, where writers from the Caribbean diaspora can submit their entries and show the world what they’ve got.
The BCLF is a celebration of culture as expressed through the pen of the storyteller and the voice of the poet. Their platform is designed to facilitate vibrant conversations about Caribbean identity via a series of readings of classic and contemporary stories, podcasts, and conversations.
The BCLF is keen on exploring the rich depth of Caribbean culture and its centuries’ long tradition of storytelling, with the hopes of empowering and motivating the hidden storyteller of Caribbean descent to find the courage to tell his/her own story and write from the unique lens of that heritage.