Current Issue

The Journal of West Indian Literature joins many in celebrating the life and writing of Maryse Condé, the dynamic Guadeloupean author who passed away on April 2, 2024 at the age of 90. Her prolific and globally-recognized body of work offered postcolonial feminist perspectives informed by her peripatetic life led across the Caribbean, Africa, Western Europe and the US. Among the many awards she gathered in her lifetime were two major honors by France - a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor in... Read more

We at JWIL honor the memory and legacy of the Guyanese writer, Rooplall Monar (1945-2024). A poet, novelist and short story writer, Monar’s work, which centers a rich Guyanese creole, paints vivid pictures of Indo-Guyanese lives on the terrain of the sugar estates and elsewhere. Part of the influential Messenger group of Guyanese writers, Monar’s 1985 Backdam People, with its humor, orality and poignancy, remains essential reading for its portrayal of Indo-Guyanese sugar estate workers in... Read more

The 2024 Caribbean Digital Virtual Artist’s Residency The Caribbean Digital (TCD) and Alice Yard invite applications for their annual virtual residency program for artists of the Caribbean and its diasporas who work in digital media. The residency aims to facilitate the development of new artworks in digital media that investigate ideas and practices in Caribbean Digital Humanities and engage with scholars in the TCD network and community. The residency is offered in conjunction with the... Read more

Join us from Feb 26-March 4, 2024 for the next JWIL online residency. This residency will be a collaboration between sx salon (@sxsalon) and JWIL (@jwilonline). Linzey Corridon (@westawestindian) will be sharing reflections on the life and work of Dr. Cliff Lashley, the Jamaican librarian-critic, poet, and aesthete (1935-1993). Cliff Lashley died in February 1993. In 2023, to mark the 30th anniversary of his passing, sx salon did a special issue on his life and work. See... Read more

Join us for JWIL's first online residency for 2024 which will be a tribute to professor and poet Edward Baugh. From Monday Jan 29 to February 5, we will be sharing readings from Baugh's poetry by Caribbean writers and scholars. This residency is a collaboration with the Off the Page Initiative and grows out of the gathering that Off the Page convened on New Year's Eve to remember Baugh and celebrate his work. Off the Page is a literary initiative based in Jamaica and spearheaded by Carolyn... Read more

JWIL mourns the passing on January 14, 2024 of the Trinidadian-British writer, Lakshmi Persaud, one of the first and most influential writers to narrate the complex experiences of Indo-Caribbean women both in the region and in the diaspora. Born in 1939 in Tunapuna, Trinidad and having lived in the UK since the 1970s, Persaud was a teacher, a journalist, and author of five novels: Butterfly in the Wind (1990), Sastra (1993), For the Love of My Name (1999), Raise the Lanterns High (2004), and... Read more

JWIL mourns the passing of Jamaican Canadian dub poet, Klyde Broox, who died January 20, 2024 at the age of 66. From his prizewinning "Ode to Bamboo," Klyde made an impact on the dub poetry scene, both in Jamaica and Canada. He mastered the art of word and syllabic play, deployed Rastafarian dread talk like a "weapon of mass instruction," and startled and surprised his audiences with his incisive critique of power and privilege. "Democracy/, democracy/, what a hypocrisy/, what an irony?/ Dem a... Read more

Join us from Monday Dec. 18 - Dec. 25 for our JWIL online residency with Pamela Mordecai (@Refracting ) who will be sharing her poetry and reflecting on her writing. Pamela Mordecai is a poet, fiction writer, editor and publisher. She is the author of eight collections of poetry. Her most recent book, de Book of Joseph (2022) was one of the finalists for the Poetry prize for the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Mordecai has also written five children’s books, and a collection... Read more