Contrary to our hopes for this year, the spectre of 2020 has followed us into 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic is still raging on across the world, and now a new, more infectious mutation of the virus that forced England into lockdown has already jumped borders and oceans. The year is already off to a bad …
The Bad The most cliché statement of this decade is definitely “2020. Am I right?” 2020 was a BAD year. The pandemic. The widespread disregard for community safety and the unnecessary politicising of preventative measures. The unnecessary fall outs of the BLM protests in America and Nigeria and other countries. The natural disasters. The political …
Continue reading 2020 – The Good, The Bad and the Ugly: A Personal Recap
WARNING: Mild spoilers ahead “For the kid scanning fairy tales for a hero with a face like theirs."And for the girls whose stories we compressed into pities and wonders, triumphs and cautions, without asking, even once, for their names.” Raybearer, dedication page Photo of Jordan Ifueko taken from jordanifueko.com Christmas came early for me this …
Continue reading Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko – The Legend of Tarisai the Just
This review was published in the Stabroek News' The Writers' Room on November 1, 2020. “My mother is a star, one of many bright jewels who sing praises in the skies, who view us from on high…She watches me now from her old throne, one more twinkle in the constellation Pushya, a figure as distant as the …
Continue reading Hindu cosmology as family drama – A review of Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar
It’s not often that a book excites me so much that it makes me want to write a persona blog post on top of a review. It's even rarer that a book makes me struggle to find the exact words I need to articulate what it means to me. I thought that this would just …
Continue reading Why I have hope for the Future of Caribbean Futurism – A personal Blog
Originally published in the Stabroek News Writers' Room Two weekends ago, I scratched something off my bucket list: I attended the Bocas Literature Festival. I was grateful that Bocas decided to keep the show on the road, pandemic or no pandemic, by opting to go fully virtual for its 10th anniversary. Although I was only …
Continue reading Reclaim, Restore, Return: A Teaser Trailer for Caribbean Futurist Fiction
Originally published in The Writer's Room in the Stabroek News In early February, while attending the Commonwealth Writers’ Workshop at Moray House, I was introduced to Nalo Hopkinson’s work. Our workshop facilitator advised me to explore Hopkinson’s work because of my interest in writing Caribbean speculative fiction: a literary genre of writing that covers everything …
Continue reading The World of Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber
Every writer has that thing that haunts them, the evasive, wispy flickering of a story, essay or poem that lingers at the backs of their minds. It makes their fingers twitch, makes them mutter lines of dialogue or exposition that bubbles up from their subconscious to become almost real, almost tangible. It is at these …
From mid-December 2018 to now, I have been attending every literary event Moray House has hosted. I learned about Edgar Mittelholzer, A.J. Seymour, Egbert Martin and Ian McDonald. I learned about the contexts in which they wrote, about how they worked to promote our literary tradition here in Guyana. I even had the honour of …
Continue reading I saw the future today – My experience at the Commonwealth Writers Workshop
My angst about my education has been around since high school, I recently (re)discovered. A few months ago, while cleaning up my still cluttered spaces at home, I found a small collection of poetry I wrote when I was in high school. I must have been around 15 or 16 years old when I penned The …
