Cropper Foundation calls for anthology contributors

The Cropper Foundation has put out a call for Caribbean nationals, writing in English and resident in the Caribbean, to contribute to an anthology targeting COP29 audiences.

The foundation is inviting submissions from emerging and established, published and unpublished Caribbean writers across poetry, fiction, and non-fiction genres for the region’s first climate-justice-themed literary anthology, Writing for our Lives.

Writing for our Lives was conceived as an anthology of stories illuminating the urgency of the climate crisis for people and communities of Caribbean states marked by their varied yet substantial vulnerabilities.

The anthology aims to platform the implications for the health, livelihoods, culture, heritage, and well-being of the many who go unseen, unheard and, ultimately, unaccounted for at international and local levels of decision-making.

The initiative is the second strand in the Today Today, Congotay! project, a series of climate justice, multi-media arts-based interventions being rolled out over the period 2023-2026, with funding from Open Society Foundations.

It follows the pilot of a climate justice-themed community micro-theatre undertaking in 2023, executed in collaboration with the Brazil and Williamsville Secondary Schools.

CEO of the Cropper Foundation Omar Mohammed says, “We believe our writers and artists are among the most qualified anywhere to interpret, reflect on and portray the disproportionate burdens of climate adjustment for the most vulnerable groups in our region.”

Mohammed adds, “This anthology is essentially a clarion call for our writers to validate the voices of the underrepresented in the climate crisis, that they may be considered too.”

The project builds on the legacy of founders John and Angela Cropper’s vision for a seminal environment for the strengthening and exploration of Caribbean identity through literature. Beginning in 2000, the year the foundation was registered, the Cropper Writing Residency was one of the first ventures of the newly formed non-profit.

Through its 15 (ten adult and five teenaged) residential three-week workshops to date, led by award-winning writers Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge, the programme has helped mould over 180 Caribbean writers from almost every country in the anglophone Caribbean.

Many of these writers have gone on to publish with some earning major regional and global literary distinctions and accolades – among them, Jamaican Kei Miller and Trinidad and Tobago authors Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, Danielle Boodoo-Fortune and Barbara Jenkins.

Writing for our lives will be published in collaboration with the Bocas Lit Fest-run imprint Peekash Press, with a view to producing an initial e-book for international release at the annual landmark climate conference, COP29 in November 2024. A regional launch of print and audio publications will follow in the first quarter of 2025.

To help ensure submissions are thematically relevant, those interested are strongly encouraged to register for the two-part virtual climate-knowledge sessions scheduled for May 14 and 15.

To be eligible, writers must have Caribbean citizenship, be resident in the region and be at least 18 by June 7, 2024. Pieces must demonstrate relevance to the theme of climate justice in a Caribbean context.

Successful applicants will be announced in July 2024. In addition to receiving expert group and one-on-one editorial support to strengthen their submissions towards the development of final pieces, they will receive an honorarium on submission of final pieces.

Invoking the Cropper Writing Residency’s spirit of kinship, selected writers will also be required to participate in peer review sessions and will be expected to contribute to the development of a virtual regional writing community.

Details will be available at www.thecropperfoundation.org from May 7, on the opening of the call for submissions. The deadline for submission is midnight on June 7.

For any queries about eligibility requirements or the application process, e-mail writing@thecropperfoundation.org.