Department of Literatures to host writing workshop

The Department of Literatures in English at the University of the West Indies, Mona, will host a creative writing workshop facilitated by writer-in-residence Dr Curdella Forbes.

The four weekly sessions of workshop will run four consecutive Wednesdays from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., beginning Wednesday, April 18 and ending Wednesday, May 9.

Forbes joins the Department from Howard University, Washington, DC, USA, where she is professor of Caribbean Literature and the director of the Caribbean Studies Programme. She is the author numerous academic articles, chapters, and book-length projects.

She has authored Ghosts (Peepal Tree Press 2012), which was the Publisher's Book of the Month (Oct- Dec 2012) and was nominated for the TipTree Award and Binghamton Book Award. She also authored another Publisher's Book of the Month winner for March 2009 with Songs of Silence (Heinemann2010), and her earlier works A Permanent Freedom (Peepal Tree Press 2008), and Flying with Icarus and Other Stories (Walker 2003) were all met with much celebration and praise as well.

In March, during Literatures Month at Mona, Dr Forbes gave a taste of her current novel-in-progress, A Tall History of Sugar.

This semester, she is teaching an upper-level creative writing course at UWI and now she is offering the general public the opportunity to workshop their fiction with her. In this four-week writing workshop, previously published and unpublished writers will be able to workshop their prose projects with Dr Forbes.

The Department of Literatures in English is inviting writers who are working on short stories, novels, and other prose writings to attend. As the workshops are hands-on and require direct feedback and personal attention, only 12 people will be accepted for the programme.

To register, please submit three to four pages of a writing sample along with the application. For further information contact the department at 927-2217 or litsengmona@gmail.com.