Guest Feature | Leila Sackur interviews John Robert Lee (ed.) Saint Lucian Writers and Writing

Saint Lucian Writers and Writing edited by John Robert Lee is an indispensable author index of poetry, prose and drama available from Papillote Press. His other publications include Collected Poems 1975-2015, Canticles and Elemental. A new collection of poems, Pierrot, will be published by Peepal Tree Press in Leeds in February 2020.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am Saint Lucian, lived there for most of my life, been involved with the arts, literature and media from the late 1960’s, from about nineteen. I attended the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados from 1969, finished off my degree at Mona, Jamaica in the early 1980’s, began work with the library service in St. Lucia in 1979 after working as a teacher, cultural officer and radio announcer and producer. Literature, theatre, literary journalism, media (print and electronic), libraries and teaching have been my main interests and occupations. I am a practising Christian and Bible teacher and preacher with my local Baptist church.

When you were growing up, what books had an impact on you?
My mother encouraged me to read and memorize poetry, my father bought me books; I read the usual Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, William and Jennings books, Enid Blyton, fairy tales and many of the classics. Comics of course. I had an early exposure to newspapers, principally the Trinidad Guardian which my father got daily. My father and mother were readers and encouraged reading. A year or so before I went to university, I took A-level classes in Literature and became introduced to the moderns – Eliot, D H Lawrence, Philip Larkin et al – read many anthologies and these have had a lifelong impact and influence. Continue reading Guest Feature | Leila Sackur interviews John Robert Lee (ed.) Saint Lucian Writers and Writing

BookBlasts® | Top 10 Reads for Independent Minds | July 2018

This month’s top 10 reads come late since preparations for the hugely exciting  #bookblast10x10tour have eaten up time . . . we bring you a sequel to the lodestar of Modernist writing, mind games, posh boys, big spenders and African dreamers, among other delights.

Listing in alphabetical order according to publisher @carcanet @HenninghamPress @maclehosepress @myriadeditions @noexiteditions @oneworldnews @papillotepress @saqibooks

Rough Breathing by Harry Gilonis bookblast diaryRough Breathing by Harry Gilonis (Carcanet) buy here

Roland Barthes speaking of the ‘grain of the voice’ describes movement deep down in the cavities, the muscles, the membranes; the way the voice bears out the materiality of the body with its checkings and releasings of breath. Simple breath holds no interest; the lungs are stupid organs. That graininess, for Barthes, inheres in friction, that sign of resistance: the body made manifest in the voice. As also in the hand as it writes. Rough breathing, then, is where writing, as well as speech, begins. Words must be shaggy as well as combed smooth.” – from the Introduction by Harry Gilonis
Continue reading BookBlasts® | Top 10 Reads for Independent Minds | July 2018

Review | The Art of White Roses, Viviana Prado-Núñez | Book of the Week

When has anyone official in this country ever told the truth? I’ve been alive for nearly eighty years and I’ve never seen it. Not once. There are people missing . . .

We know about how Fidel and Raúl Castro Ruz overthrew the dictator Fulgencio Batista during the 1953–59 Cuban Revolution, and that Cuba became a communist thorn in the side of America under the leadership of Fidel Castro, Moscow’s communist ally in the United States’ back yard. But what was it like living day-by-day through the revolution, that moment in time when history altered its course?

Continue reading Review | The Art of White Roses, Viviana Prado-Núñez | Book of the Week

Interview | Viviana Prado-Núñez | Author of the Week

Where were you born, and where did you grow up?
I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and lived in Gurabo until I was five. After that, my mother moved to Maryland so I spent a lot of my time both there and in my father’s house in Puerto Rico. (And in airplanes. Lots and lots of airplanes).

What sorts of books were in your family home?
I’m not sure actually. I know my mother has several boxes of children’s books somewhere in the basement, but I don’t really remember those. Most of my books growing up were from the library. I’d go once a week, stick my nose in the corner of the fantasy section, and come out with an armful. I know it took several years of rereading before my mother finally gave me the Harry Potter box set for Christmas.

Who were early formative influences as a writer?
Sandra Cisneros — she was the first (and only) Latina writer I ever came across in a classroom growing up. After that I think came the epiphany of “Oh, I can use Spanish in my writing?” Also I still credit my fiction teacher at Brown University, Michael Stewart, for teaching me not only how fiction worked, but how to think about writing for myself.

Continue reading Interview | Viviana Prado-Núñez | Author of the Week

BookBlasts® | Top 10 Reads for Independent Minds | April 2018

Our April top 10 indie reads take in Albania, Arabia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, the Balkans, the Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian and Pacific Oceans, along with the Best of British crime, poetry, and experimentalism.

@BloodaxeBooks @BloomsburyBooks @BelgraviaB @Carcanet @DarfPublishers @MelvilleHouse @noexitpress @PennedintheM @SaqiBooks @CrimeClassics

Negative Space by Lulketa Lleshanaku trs. Ani Gjika (Bloodaxe Books) buy here
Winner of an English PEN Award

At night the voice of the river is totalitarian
like his alcoholic father’s breath
that blows against his neck after a haircut.
And he doesn’t dare look back at what he did.
His vision doubles, two pasts,
two version of the truth,
two women to fall in love with,
two lives to escape.
But which of them is real? Which an illusion?

Continue reading BookBlasts® | Top 10 Reads for Independent Minds | April 2018

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