Walcott-Hackshaw is UWI's new public orator

Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, professor of French literature and creative writing in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, has been appointed the new public orator at UWI, St Augustine.

Her appointment, effective August 1, is for three years. She succeeds Christine Carrington, professor of molecular genetics and virology, who served as public orator from 2017-2020, said a media release from the university.

Historically, the duties of the orator are "to write addresses for presentation to the sovereign and formal letters for presentation to other universities and institutions and to "present to the chancellor and university persons on whom the titles of degrees are conferred honoris causa." The post acts as the voice of the university during public occasions.

At UWI, the public orator writes the citations for the honorary graduands and presents them to University Chancellor Robert Bermudez at the St Augustine graduation ceremonies. Each campus of UWI has its own public orator who prepares and delivers citations at university functions such as graduation and awards ceremonies and convocations.

Prof Walcott-Hackshaw has written and co-edited eight books, including Border Crossings: A Trilingual Anthology of Caribbean Women Writers; Methods in Caribbean Research: Literature, Discourse, Culture; Echoes of the Haitian Revolution 1804-2004; and Reinterpreting the Haitian Revolution and its Cultural Aftershocks.

Apart from her scholarly essays and articles, she has also published creative works. Four Taxis Facing North, her first collection of short stories, was considered one of the best works of 2007 by the Caribbean Review of Books. Her first novel, Mrs B, was short-listed for Best Book of Fiction in the Guyana Prize for Literature in 2014. Her short stories have been widely translated and anthologised. Stick No Bills, her latest collection of short fiction was published in 2020. Her most recent publication is a biography of the writer Aimé Césaire.