Karel Mc Intosh is excited about social media, and the opportunities it creates for communications and creating relationships.

Patrice Elizabeth Grell Yursik (Afrobella) is a Trinidad-born writer who currently resides in Miami.

The 5th Caribbean Creative Writers’ Residential Workshop sponsored by The Cropper Foundation, and organised in partnership with the Centre for Creative and Festival Arts, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, will take place from June 30th to July 31st 2008 in Trinidad and Tobago.

I've decided to run a survey based on this quote by VS Naipaul in "Caribbean Odyssey":

Naipaul's insistence in "Caribbean Odyssey" that Walcott's reputation was built on a "black idea" is at best disingenuous and at worst morally bankrupt because of its failure to recognize beauty as a human value, and, perhaps, reveals his true sensibilities as a satirist.

Dawad Philip was born in Trinidad. He is a poet and painter and cultural activist, as well as a journalist in the United States. He is the author of Invocations and his work has appeared in several anthologies, including, most recently, Poetry International’s English Language Poetry from Around the World, (2003-2004).

Lawrence Scott is from Trinidad and Tobago. He is the prize-winning author of the novel Aelred’s Sin (London: Allison & Busby, 1998), which won a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book in the Caribbean & Canada 1999. Night Calypso (Allison& Busby, 2004), his most recent novel, was short-listed for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best Book in Canada & the Caribbean and nominated for The International Impac Dublin Literary Award 2006 and was published in France as Calypso de Nuit in June 2005. His first novel, Witchbroom (Allison, 1992, Heinemann, 1993) was also short-listed for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in Canada & the Caribbean, 1993. His short stories have been read on the BBC and have been anthologized internationally, notably in the Penguin Book of Caribbean Short Stories and the Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories. He divides his time between writing and teaching literature and creative writing.

Ramabai Espinet was born in Trinidad and Tobago. She is a poet, essayist and critic. Her first novel, The Swinging Bridge (Toronto: Harper Flamingo, 2003), was short-listed for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize in the category of Best First Book (Caribbean and Canada Region), long-listed for the IMPAC Dublin 2005 prize for fiction and selected for the Robert Adams lecture series 2005, held annually in Toronto and Montreal, and featuring Adams’s pick of “modern classics." Other works by Espinet include the poetry collection Nuclear Seasons (1991) and the children’s books The Princess of Spadina (Toronto: Sister Vision, 1992) and Ninja’s Carnival (Sister Vision, 1993).

Mervyn Taylor was born in Trinidad. He is the author of three books of poetry: An Island of His Own (1992), The Goat (1999), and Gone Away (2006), and a CD, Road Clear (2004), done in collaboration with bassist David Williams. About the poems in his latest collection Debbie Jacob wrote in her column in the Trinidad Guardian, "Lost in the cold and unable to return home to the tropics, the West Indians of Taylor's poems reach as far as they can: Florida." Mervyn Taylor lives in Brooklyn, New York. Here is an excerpt from a reading that Mervyn Taylor gave at the Miami Book Fair International on November 18, 2006.

“There’s a Caribbean conference happening under the radar,” said Adrian Castro as the 23rd Miami Book Fair International began, and the continuation of the successful Caribbean Voices series under the guidance of Mervyn Solomon kicked into high gear. This year’s program featured younger writers such as Marlon James, established veterans such as Mervyn Taylor, and displayed the breadth of talent in fiction, poetry, and non-fiction that has emerged from the Caribbean during the past thirty years. For whether it was Shara McCallum’s reminiscing about her family’s choice to leave Jamaica during the seventies, Pamela Mordecai’s elegies to a slain brother, or Deborah Jack’s celebration of motherhood, the tone of the presentations reflected the newfound confidence of the writers who’ve come a long way from the image of Brathwaite’s “homeless, harborless spade,” to adventurous journeyers like Dawad Phillip.