CALABASHMENT: “MIX BUT DON’T BLEND IN”

A much more thorough recounting of what was one of the most extraordinarily rewarding professional experiences I’ve had as a writer — as a participant in the 2006 Calabash International Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica — is forthcoming. Promise.

In the meantime, here is a smattering of photos (most taken by the multitalented Maurice Possley (aka Mr. God Girl) from the three-day festival. One love!

POET KWAME DAWES INTRODUCES THE NON-FICTION KIDS:

Born in Ghana in 1962, Kwame Dawes spent most of his childhood in Jamaica. 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. His eleventh collection of verse, Wisteria: Poems From the Swamp Country was published in January of this year by Red Hen Press. His memoir, A Far Cry From Plymouth Rock: A Personal Narrative also appeared this year from Peepal Tree Press. Excerpts of it were published in Granta and World Literature Today.

He is the Distinguished Poet-in-Residence at the University of South Carolina, where he Directs the University of South Carolina Arts Institute as well as the South Carolina Poetry Initiative. He has been for six years the Programming Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival, which takes place in Jamaica each year.

Kwame brought us on stage to a packed house Saturday afternoon under a perfectly clear azure sky: God Girl, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times cultural critic (and all-around fabulous woman) Margo Jefferson, and Christopher John Farley (WSJ editor, novelist and author of a new book about the early life of Bob Marley) …

Margo Jefferson is a cultural critic for The New York Times. She has been a daily book reviewer, the Sunday theater critic and a Sunday Book Review columnist. She received a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995.

Her book, On Michael Jackson, was published by Pantheon in 2006. In 2002 she was a Senior Fellow in Columbia University’s National Arts Journalism Program and in 2001 an Artist-in-Residence at Anna Deveare Smith’s Institute for The Arts and Civic Dialogue at Harvard University. She has also written and performed two theater pieces at The Cherry Lane Theater (2001) and The Culture Project (2002).

Ms. Jefferson has been a staff reviewer for Newsweek and a Contributing Editor to Vogue. Essays for Grand Street and The Nation received awards from The Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines and The American Library Association. She teaches at Columbia University and Eugene Lang College.

Christopher John Farley was born in Kingston, Jamaica and raised in Brockport, New York. He is a 1988 graduate of Harvard University and a former editor of The Harvard Crimson and The Harvard Lampoon. He has worked as a reporter for USA Today and as a music critic, writer and editor for Time magazine. He is currently an editor on the staff of The Wall Street Journal.

His biography of Bob Marley entitled Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley, was published by Amistad/HarperCollins in May of 2006. His previous books include the novels Kingston By Starlight, a retelling of the true story of Anne Bonny, My Favorite War, a satirical look at the first Gulf War, and the bestselling biography Aliyah: More Than A Woman. Mr. Farley is also co-author of Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, which served as the companion volume to the acclaimed PBS series of the same name.

Here we all are, trying to “catch a fire” . . .

GOD GIRL’S READING, SATURDAY AFTERNOON:

GEOFF DYER AND COLIN CHANNER, SATURDAY MORNING:

OK, so two of my new favorite people are the maddeningly prolific author Geoff Dyer (from London) and Calabash’s founder, author Colin Channer (from Fort Greene, Brooklyn by way of Kingston, Jamaica). Here are a couple of snaps from Geoff’s reading and subsequent laugh-laden interrogation by Colin:

Geoff Dyer was born in Cheltenham in 1958. He was educated at the local grammar school and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he read English. He is the author of three novels: Paris Trance, The Search and The Colour of Memory. He is also the author of Ways of Telling, a critical study of John Berger, and the essay collection Anglo-English Attitude in addition to four genre-defying titles.

They are But Beautiful, The Missing of the Somme, Out of Sheer Rage and Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It. But Beautiful was winner of a 1992 Somerset Maugham Prize and short-listed for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize). Out of Sheer Rage was a finalist, in the U.S., for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It was the winner of the 2004 WH Smith Best Travel Book Award. Mr. Dyer’s most recent book is The Ongoing Moment, winner of the ICP Infinity Award for Writing on Photography. He is also the editor of John Berger: Selected Essays, and co-editor, with Margaret Sartor, of What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney. In 2003, he was a recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and in 2005 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.