Honouring the literary creativity that led to authors like Earl Lovelace, Samuel Selvon and V.S. Naipaul, is the goal of the National Library and Information System Authority’s annual first time author’s appreciation programme.
The sixty nine literary works published in 2024 by local first time authors cover a wide and diverse range of topics.
Executive Director of the National Library and Information System Authority, Paula Greene said over the last sixteen years almost seven hundred authors have joined the ranks of first time authors.
“This year we have among our new works twenty four fiction titles, thirty seven non fiction titles and eight books of poems. Every book represented here is a contribution to the literary landscape of Trinidad and Tobago and will be added to the Heritage Library’s collection.”
Founder of the first authors appreciation event, retired librarian, Joan Osborne shared Professor Kenneth Ramchand’s experience with his Canadian tutor as he sought to write his thesis on literature from these Caribbean shores.
“Reading Selvon, he began to see the images, he began to feel the images, he began to actually smell the cane fields, he began to get the image of himself as a Caribbean person. That is what led him to follow a path of analyzing and creating a space, a body of work classifying it to be named West Indian literature.”
Shawn Paul Kalloo author of Witness a Stick Fighting Legacy said it took him more than a decade to pen his book.
“One young man and his pursuit of soca and calypso and, you know, his enjoying the sceneries and his family enjoying all the different sceneries and legacies of Trinidad and the stories that were told my father, grandfather, mother, myself, uncles and stuff like that.”
While nine year old Aidan Stowe said he wants to inspire his peers.
“So the book is about the drummer boy, and he loves to drum and this is also a bed time story. And it’s to encourage boys and girls to read more and write.”
NALIS continues to celebrate the imagination and creativity that is an integral part of this country’s literary landscape.