Songshine features Lovelace

THE Songshine open-mic concert will feature celebrated author Earl Lovelace on Sunday in Arima.

The award-winning Trinidadian novelist, journalist, playwright and short story writer will read from his works, following featured performances and an open-mic segment.

Lovelace is known for his works such as novels The Dragon Can’t Dance (1979) and Is Just a Movie (2012); non-fiction works, including Growing in the Dark – Selected Essays (2003); and plays like The Wine Of Astonishment (1983), Jestina’s Calypso (1978) and Joebell and America (1999), which was made into a film in 2006.

The live event will take place at East Yard, 27 Prince Street in Arima, (opposite Kool Korner Bar & Boss Ah Soup), near the corner of El Carmen Street from 6-10 pm. Other featured performers will include poet and radio journalist Sterling Henderson, poet Krys Dumas and musicians Ruth Osman and Songshine founder and host Gillian Moor. Lovelace was a guest at the series’ earlier incarnation in the early 2000s, when he read from his inspirational and insightful works to a rapt audience at Trevor’s Edge in St Augustine. Sunday’s Arima forum will once again “provide a space for the public, and especially young, emerging talents”, to hear from a seasoned veteran in an “up close and personal” setting.

Awards for Lovelace’s work include the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1997, the 2012 OCM Bocas Literature prize and the Chaconia Medal (Gold) for literature in 1988. He also received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of the West Indies in 2002. The show will be the fourth instalment at the Arima venue, an intimate open-air arts space founded in September last year.