After 14 years, what next for Bocas Lit Fest?

The Bocas Lit Fest has been staged for 14 years, longer than anyone might have expected when the local literary festival began.

The 2024 edition began on Thursday and concludes today with the First Citizens National Poetry Grand Slam, the finals of the performance-poetry competition.

Sandwiched between were a wide range of forms of literary appreciation, from extempo calypso to a screening of director Michael Mooleedhar’s Green Days by the River, the film adapted from Michael Anthony’s 1967 novel.

The festival, always intimidating in its scope, sweep and capacity to attract the interest of significant international talent, made more specific space in this year’s edition for new authors, from the very basics of short-story writing to insider tips for getting your first work published.

One key event on today’s agenda is readings from works in progress by five participants in the Bocas Breakthrough Fellowships, June Aming, Heather Barker, Stephanie Koathes, Rhea Manley and Amilcar Sanatan.

These writers are engaged in a six-month fellowship that’s designed to help them complete a book manuscript while sharpening their professional skills and networking capabilities. The programme includes virtual seminars and mentorship by an established author, and a chapbook will be published with an excerpt of their work in progress.

As dense as the programme for the annual festival is, the work continues throughout the year, having survived even the chilling circumstances of covid lockdowns and the ensuing restrictions on in-person gathering.

And the work it does is necessary, particularly with young people of all ages, both for readers and budding authors.

In 2021, when everything was being done virtually, children were offered an opportunity to write about their experiences under lockdown conditions and to read their stories to their peers. That experience is still available as recordings on the child-focused section of the festival’s website, Bocas Storytime.

Young adult writers are engaged through the Write Away young adult literature programme, which now features a nonfiction category that can only enhance youth comprehension and communication skills.

In an era dominated by impenetrable slang, abbreviations and weekly acronym updates fuelled by the urgent brevity of online text, such efforts are a welcome return to considered, thoughtful writing.

Bocas has attracted and mostly retained a range of sponsors, and those supporters should consider their funding well spent.

Still, the organisers must continue to reach out to the wider society to understand how to expand its influence and reach in a field as important as reading; and the appreciation and creation of writing for its own sake and not only for its educational value.

In this, quality, more participation and more engagement should be the ambition.