Novelist Colin Channer is the father of two children in addition to being a troublemaker, the founder and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is also chairman of the festival’s board of trustees.

His many works of fiction include the story collection Passing Through, the novella The Girl With the Golden Shoes, and novel Waiting In Vain, a 1998 Critic’s Choice selection of the Washington Post. He is the editor of the fiction anthology Iron Balloons: Hit Fiction from Jamaica’s Calabash Writer’s Workshop and the co-editor with Kwame Dawes of the poetry anthology So Much Things to Say: Over 100 Poets from the First Ten Years of the Calabash International Literary Festival. His honors include the appointment as the 2008-2011 Susan and Donald Newhouse Professor in Creative Writing at Wellesley College near Boston, MA and the 2010 Silver Musgrave Medal for Achievement in Literature. His essays and criticism have appeared in among other places, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Times Literary Supplement.

Dorine O’Garro was born in Montserrat and migrated to New York City at the age of fifteen.  She attended Washington Irving High School, and Hunter College, where she majored in Spanish and minored in French, and earned her BA and MA degrees.  She also attended the National University of Mexico in Mexico City, for two summer sessions, and L’Université Laval in Quebec City for one summer session.  During the 1970s she spent her summers in Montserrat with her cousin, the late Mrs. Ellie Wade.

Dorine taught Spanish and some French for thirty-two years in New York City beginning in September 1963.  She spent her last eighteen years at Stuyvesant High School and retired on July 10, 1995. Eight days later, on July 18, 1995, she listened to the reports of  volcanic eruptions in Montserrat and decided, then, that she would write about the Montserrat  of her childhood and young adulthood.  Not being a historian, she has chosen the pathway of fiction.

Her literary output includes Montserrat on My Mind (2004), Montserrat in the Heart of the Caribbean, America and England (2006), Miss Tillie (2008), and soon to be released: Maamie and Parpi Daley of Montserrat.

Photo by Joseph Jones

Eric Jerome Dickey was born in Memphis, Tennessee and attended the University of Memphis (the former Memphis State), where he earned his degree in Computer System Technology. In 1983, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in engineering.

After landing a job in the aerospace industry as a software developer, Eric Jerome Dickey’s artistic talents surfaced, inspiring him to become an actor and a stand-up comedian. Yet Eric quickly found out that writing was something he could do and do well. From creative writing classes to avidly consuming the works of his favorite authors, Eric Jerome Dickey began to shape a writing career of his own.  Having written several scripts for his personal comedy act, he started writing poetry and short stories. “The film work gave me insight into character development, the acting classes helped me understand motivation…All of it goes hand in hand,” Eric explains. He joined the IBWA (International Black Writers and Artists), participated in their development workshops, and became a recipient of the IBWA SEED Scholarship to attend UCLA’s Creative Writing classes.  In 1994 his first published short story, “Thirteen,” appeared in the IBWA’s River Crossing: Voices of the Diaspora-An Anthology of the International Black Experience. A second short story, “Days Gone By,” was published in the magazine A Place to Enter.

With those successes behind him, Eric Jerome Dickey decided to fine-tune some of his earlier work and developed a screenplay called “Cappuccino.” “Cappuccino” was directed and produced by Craig Ross, Jr. and appeared in coffee houses around the Los Angeles area.  In February 1998, “Cappuccino” made its local debut during the Pan African Film Festival at the Magic Johnson Theater in Los Angeles.

Short stories, though, didn’t seem to fulfill Eric Jerome Dickey’s creative yearnings. Eric says, “I’d set out to do a ten-page story and it would go on for three hundred pages.”  So Eric kept writing and reading and sending out query letters for his novels for almost three years until he finally got an agent. “Then a door opened,” Eric says.  “And I put my foot in before they could close it.”  And that door has remained opened, as Eric Jerome Dickey’s novels have placed him on the map as one of the best writers of contemporary urban fiction.

Eric Jerome Dickey’s book signing tours for Sister, Sister; Friends and Lovers; Milk in My Coffee; Cheaters; and Liar’s Game took him from coast to coast and helped propel each of these novels to #1 on the “Blackboard Bestsellers List.” Cheaters was named “Blackboard Book of the Year” in 2000. In June 2000, Eric Jerome Dickey celebrated the French publication of Milk in My Coffee (Cafe Noisette) by embarking on a book tour to Paris.  Soon after, Milk in My Coffee became a bestseller in France. His books have also been published in Japan, Poland, and England.

Eric Jerome Dickey’s novels, Resurrecting Midnight, Chasing Destiny, Liar’s Game, Between Lovers, Thieves’ Paradise, The Other Woman, Drive Me Crazy, Genevieve, Naughty or Nice, Sleeping with Strangers, Waking with Enemies, Pleasure, and Resurrecting Midnight have all earned him the success of a spot on The New York Times bestseller list. Liar’s Game, Thieves’ Paradise, The Other Woman, and Genevieve have also given Dickey the added distinction of being nominated for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work in 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2005. In 2006, he was honored with the awards for Best Contemporary Fiction and Author of the Year (Male) at the 2006 African American Literary Award Show, an honor which was repeated in 2007.  In 2009, at the African American Literary Award Show, Dying for Revenge received the award for Best fiction. In 2008, Eric was nominated for Storyteller of the Year at the 1^st annual ESSENCE Literary Awards. In January 2001, Eric Jerome Dickey was a contributor to New American Library’s anthology Got To Be Real: Four Original Love Stories, also a Blackboard Bestseller. He also had a story entitled “Fish Sanwich” appear in the anthology Mothers and Sons. In June 2002, Dickey contributed to Black Silk: A Collection of African American Erotica (Warner Books) as well as to Riots Beneath the Baobab (published by International Black Writers and Artists of Los Angeles in April 2002). His books have held steady positions on regional bestseller lists and have been featured in many publications, including ESSENCE, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times..

Eric Jerome Dickey is also the author of a six issue miniseries of comic books for Marvel Enterprises featuring Storm (X-Men) and the Black Panther. His novel, Friends and Lovers has been optioned for film.

The work of Dana Manno in administration, education and performing arts encompasses the worlds of theatre, dance, music, fine arts and electronic media. As a senior faculty member of Adelphi University’s Performing Arts and African American Studies departments, she developed the curriculum for and taught courses in History of Africans in America on Film, the Black Drama Workshop and Ethnic Dance. Her work with Adelphi’s La Union Latino and the African Peoples Organization resulted in her appointment as Coordinator of Talent and Library Liaison for Adelphi University’s Center for African American Studies Program.  As founder and artistic director of the Adelphi Arts Ensemble, she created a community outreach program that recruited university students to perform theatre, dance and music programs for residents and students of Nassau and Suffolk counties in Long Island, N.Y.

Her work as a songwriter, director and choreographer at the world renowned La Mama Theatre, led to her nominations for two ADELCO awards for the plays “Daddy” and “Songs for my Sisters”.  Ms. Manno’s film credits include choreographer and actress in Gordon Parks Sr.’s Leadbelly and actress in Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. The New York Times critiqued her choreographic talent in the former as “sensual and exciting”.

She is currently a faculty member at SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology, where she is also the Faculty Advisor and Director of the F.I.T. Theatre Ensemble, managing the budget, directing plays and coordinating student events.

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffith

Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood and early adult life in Jamaica. He is a writer of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and plays. As a poet, he is profoundly influenced by the rhythms and textures of that lush place, citing in a recent interview his “spiritual, intellectual, and emotional engagement with reggae music.” His book Bob Marley: Lyrical Genius remains the most authoritative study of the lyrics of Bob Marley.  Dawes has published fifteen collections of poetry. His most recent titles include Back of Mount Peace (2009); Hope’s Hospice (2009); Wisteria, finalist for the Patterson Memorial Prize; Impossible Flying (2007); and Gomer’s Song (2007). Progeny of Air (Peepal Tree, 1994) was the winner of the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection in the UK. Other poetry collections include Resisting the Anomie (Goose Lane, 1995); Prophets (Peepal Tree, 1995); Jacko Jacobus, (Peepal Tree, 1996); and Requiem, (Peepal Tree. 1996), a suite of poems inspired by the illustrations of African American artist, Tom Feelings in his landmark book The Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo; and Shook Foil (Peepal Tree, 1998), a collection of reggae-inspired poems. His book, Midland, was awarded the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize by the Ohio University Press (2001). In 2001, Dawes was a winner of a Pushcart Prize for the best American poetry of 2001 for his long poem, “Inheritance.”

He has also published two novels: Bivouac (2009) and She’s Gone (2007, Akashic Books), winner of the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for best First Novel. In 2007 he released A Far Cry From Plymouth Rock: A Personal Narrative (Peepal Tree Books). His essays have appeared in numerous journals including Bomb Magazine, The London Review of Books, Granta, Essence, World Literature Today, and Double Take Magazine.

In September 2009, Dawes won an Emmy for LiveHopeLove.com, an interactive site based on Kwame Dawes’s Pulitzer Center project, HOPE: Living and loving with AIDS in Jamaica. It has won other accolades including a People’s Voice Webby Award, and was the inspiration for the music/spoken word performance Wisteria & HOPE which premiered at the National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina.

Dawes is an actor, playwright, and producer, an accomplished storyteller, broadcaster, and was the lead singer in Ujamaa, a reggae band. To date, he has seen produced fifteen of his plays; and he has acted in, directed or produced several of these productions, most recently a production of his musical, One Love, at the Lyric Hammersmith in London. Commissioned by Talawa, Britian’s leading black theatre company, and inspired by Rogert Mais’ classic novel Brotherman, One Love takes us to the heart of the Jamaican soul, as actors, dancers, singers, life musicians, and a DJ draw on influences such as Bob Marley and Lee “Scratch” Perry to tell this powerful parable of desire and denial.

Through the years, Dawes has collaborated with musicians and artists to create a dynamic series of performances based on his poetry that have proven to be some of the most compelling and challenging presentations of poetry being performed today. Wisteria is a multimedia performance with composer Kevin Simmonds, who set the poems from Dawes’ book of the same name, to music. The result is an evening length performance that explores the life of women who lived through the Jim Crow period in Sumter, South Carolina.

Dawes is Distinguished Poet in Residence, Louis Frye Scudder Professor of Liberal Arts and founder and executive director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. He is the director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute and the programming director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica in May of each year.

Kwame, who inspired the Alliouagana Festival of the Word, will be reading from his many publications and new work.

“Discovering New Worlds through Words.”

• Discovering the World of Haiti: a dynamic presentation by Professor Carolyn Cooper

A weekend of Drama including the production of Edgar White’s Count It All Joy. Part proceeds of this production will be donated towards Haiti Relief efforts.

• Workshops with and presentations by award winning writers and illustrators of children’s books Frané Lessac and Mark Greenwood.

• Storytime for the Kids with Best of Books.

Rachel Manley who was missed last year, will be at this year’s festival.

• Opal Palmer Adisa bringing a message to parents Being the Parent You Want to Be and reading from I Name Me Name (Peepal Tree Press, 2008), the prose piece “Children Must Be Seen & Heard.”

• Discover the world of suspense and intrigue with Eric Jerome Dickey.

• Revisiting the Reading Rainbow Video My Little Island starring LeVar Burton.

Mark Greenwood is an author and musician. His books, Outback Adventure (2000), Magic Boomerang (2001), and Our Big Island (2001) were prompted by an interest in multicultural literature and the unique way illustrated books can assist children to develop an understanding of other cultures and perspectives.

The Legend of Lasseter’s Reef (2003), and The Legend of Moondyne Joe (2004) aim to encourage an appreciation of Australia’s unique myths and legends. Both books have won the West Australian Premier’s Children’s Book Award. Fortuyn’s Ghost (2007), tells the story of an ill-fated Dutch East India ship. Simpson and His Donkey (2008), was a Children’s Book Council Information Honor Book in 2009 and was selected as a USBBY Outstanding International Book. Mark’s new publication is Ned Kelly and the Green Sash (2010).

Mark enjoys working with students of all ages, inspiring and developing their natural curiosity about books and writing. As a musician, he spent many years recording and performing with the world’s foremost record producers and musicians. Mark often incorporates percussion into literature based workshops to stimulate imagination and creativity.

Culminating with the international success of The Polished Hoe in 2002, Austin Clarke has published ten novels, six short-story collections, and three memoirs in the United States, England, Canada, Australia, and Holland since 1964. Storm of Fortune, the second novel in his Toronto Trilogy about the lives of Barbadian immigrants, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award in 1973. The Origin of Waves won the Rogers Communications Writers’ Development Trust Prize for Fiction in 1997. In 1999 his ninth novel, The Question, was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award. In 2003 he had a private audience with Queen Elizabeth in honour of his Commonwealth Prize for his tenth novel, The Polished Hoe, which in 2004 was also a finalist for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award.

In 1992 Austin Clarke was honored with a Toronto Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature. In 1997, Frontier College in Toronto also granted him a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1998 he was invested with the Order of Canada, and since then he has received four honorary doctorates. In 1999 he received the Martin Luther King Junior Award for Excellence in Writing.

Austin Chesterfield Clarke was born in Barbados in 1934 and immigrated to Canada to attend the University of Toronto in 1955. He quickly became a leader of the civil rights movement in Toronto. In his work from 1965-73 as a journalist and broadcaster covering social issues, he produced documentaries and interviews with artists and leaders of the civil rights movement. From 1968-74 Clarke served as visiting professor at Yale, Brandeis, Williams, Wellesley, Duke, and the universities of Texas and Indiana. He assisted in setting up Black Studies programs at Yale and Harvard. In 1974 Clarke became cultural attaché of the Barbadian Embassy in Washington, and from 1975-77 he served as general manager of the Caribbean Broadcasting Corporation in Barbados. From 1973-6 he served as advisor to the Prime Minister of Barbados and from 1989-94 he was a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board. Austin Clarke has been Writer-in-Residence at Massey College, University of Toronto, and at the Toronto Public Library.  His eleventh novel, More, was published in 2008.

Born in New Jersey, Frané Lessac loves to travel and to work on books based on her worldwide journeys. “I try to portray the people and places of these countries to children in a sensitive, accurate, and educational way.”  Attracted by the beauty of Montserrat, she moved to the small Caribbean island, which inspired My Little Island (HarperCollins), the first of many books written and illustrated by Frané.  This publication won the St. Maarten Children’s Book of the Year in 1984 and in 1985 was a Reading Rainbow Feature Book.

A number of her paintings are part of private collections worldwide and has exhibited her work in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and London. She studied at the New School for Social Research in New York City, the University of Southern California, and Ethnographic Film at UCLA in California.

Frané Lessac is married to children’s author Mark Greenwood, and they have two children, son Luke and daughter Cody. Frané is the Illustrator Liaison for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators in West Australia and on the Executive Committee of the Australian Society of Authors.

Other books by Frané include Caribbean Canvas (Macmillan, UK; HarperCollins, USA; Boyds Mill Press USA, 1987) and the 1989 Caribbean Alphabet (Macmillan, UK;  William Morrow, USA;  Letterbox Library, UK).  In 1989 Caribbean Canvas became the Notable Trade Book in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC) USA and in 1990 won the American Institute of Graphic Arts – Book Show Award.  In 1994, Caribbean Alphabet was named Notable Trade Book in Social Studies (NCSS/CBC) USA and made the Book of the Month Club USA.