Press Releases 2006

U.S. Embassy Sponsors American Writers for Calabash Literary Festival

The U.S. Embassy continues its support for literary and cultural development in Jamaica as a sponsor of the Calabash International Literary Festival to be held later this month in Treasure Beach, St. Elizabeth. The Embassy is also supporting the participation of five American writers including a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Poet Laureate. This is the fourth year that the U.S. Embassy has sponsored artists to attend the festival.
 
“The United States government is a proud supporter of excellence in the arts, both in the U.S. and around the globe, and we are happy to be a part of this unique showcase of literature at its best,” said Public Affairs Officer Glenn Guimond. He encourages everyone to support the Jamaican success of Calabash 2006.

The U.S. Embassy is sponsoring American writers Sonia Sanchez, Ishle Park, Cathleen Falsani, Lolita Hernandez, and Margo Jefferson.

Sonia Sanchez has been an influential force in African American literary and political culture for over three decades. She is the author of over a dozen books including Homecoming, We a BaddDDD People, I've Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, and Shake Loose My Skin. Sanchez has received numerous honors including a National Endowment for the Arts Award and the governor's Award for Excellence.

Ishle Park’s first book, The Temperature of This Water, is the winner of the 2005 Pen America Beyond Margins Award for Outstanding Writers of Color and the 2005 Member's Choice Award of the Asian American Literary Awards.

Author of The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People, Cathleen Falsani is a popular religion writer and columnist from the Chicago-Sun Times.  She was named 2005 Religion Writer of the Year, by the Religion Newswriters Association.

Lolita Hernandez is the author of two books of poetry, Quiet Battles and Snakecrossing, largely influenced by the rhythms and language of her Trinidad and St. Vincent family. Stories from Autopsy of an Engine, her first collection of fiction, have appeared in several publications.

Pulitzer Prize winner Margo Jefferson is a critic-at-large covering theatre for the New York Times. She is author of On Michael Jackson and co-author of the non-fiction, Roots of Time: A Portrait of African Life and Culture