Digital Publishing Roundtable
Digital Publishing Roundtable
In the past two months, we have lost two remarkable members of the Caribbean literary community. Recently, Derek Walcott, 87, passed away in St. Lucia. There has, even in the short time since his death on 17 March, been much written in tribute to Walcott’s legacy and I expect there will be much more to come as we remember the work he has left with us and mourn the work that we hoped would yet come. An extended tribute of note is #AWeekinWalcott by Trinidadian Shivanee Ramlochan.
The second, earlier loss is more difficult to write about because it is closer to home. Giselle Rampaul, lecturer at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, and creator of The Spaces between Words podcast, died suddenly in Trinidad on 9 February. Giselle and I often crossed paths at conferences and shared information via e-mail; she recently reviewed Roydon Salick’s monograph Ismith Khan: The Man and His Work for us here at sx salon. She was young, only forty, but had already contributed much to Caribbean literary studies via her teaching and scholarship and her archiving of the voices of a wide range of Caribbean writers. Many of us benefited from her generosity, her enthusiasm, and her dedication. She will be missed.
Giselle coedited two books and published several print articles, but her contribution to Caribbean literary studies is primarily digital. The Spaces between Words has published almost one hundred podcasts, providing an extensive resource for other creative writers and for scholars and students of Caribbean literature. The future of the project, however, is now in question. As I write this introduction, the Spaces site has expired and is “pending renewal or deletion.” The large archive of valuable recordings, painstakingly curated and edited over the past five years, is currently unavailable to us. There were other people involved with the project, so there is reason to expect that the archive will be available again in future; but Giselle was the energy and organizing force behind Spaces—what will the project be, if it is to be, without her?
This potential ephemerality, this tenuousness, of digital projects is one of the concerns that had prompted me to organize a roundtable on digital publishing at the West Indian Literature Conference last October. With the revamping of the sx salon platform last August and the launch of sx archipelagos a few months prior, I was forced to contemplate access to sx salon’s archives and to speculate about the shape of work we might publish in future. Seeking inspiration, I invited other editors of Caribbean digital platforms—Evelyn O’Callaghan, Kaiama L. Glover, Laurie N. Taylor, and Patricia J. Saunders—to join me in a discussion about managing the potentials and pitfalls of digital platforms. In this issue’s discussion section, we publish an edited version of that session.
In Reviews, we cover new publications in the field: Rachel L. Mordecai reviews Rosario Ferré’s Memoir, translated by Suzanne Hintz and Benigno Trigo; Ryan Joyce reviews Première nuit: Une anthologie du désir and Volcaniques: Une anthologie du plaisir, both edited by Léonora Miano; Alison Mc Letchie reviews Maurice St. Pierre’s Eric Williams and the Anticolonial Tradition: The Making of a Diasporan Intellectual; and Janelle Rodriques reviews Robert Antoni’s As Flies to Whatless Boys. Also included in this section is a review essay by Gary Wilder on questions of freedom and forms of marronage.
In the interview section of this issue, Opal Palmer Adisa reviews Shara McCallum’s newest collection of poetry, Madwoman, and includes a short conversation with the poet. We also publish here Nathan H. Dize’s interview of Susan Pickford, translator of Anacaona by Jean Métellus. This interview resonates with our discussion last issue of literary translation.
In Poetry & Prose, we publish new poetry by G. A. E. Griffin and short fiction by Kirk Budhooram. Please enjoy the variety of works included here.
Kelly Baker Josephs
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Table of Contents
Introduction and Table of Contents—Kelly Baker Josephs
Reviews
The Promise of Freedom and the Predicament of Marronage—Gary Wilder
Review essay on Freedom as Marronage by Neil Roberts
Intimacies of Family and Fiction—Rachel L. Mordecai
Review of Rosario Ferré’s Memoir, translated by Suzanne Hintz and Benigno Trigo
Writing Desire and Pleasure in the Francophone Caribbean and African Diaspora—Ryan Joyce
Review of Première nuit: Une anthologie du désir and Volcaniques: Une anthologie du plaisir, edited by Léonora Miano
Father of the Nation?—Alison Mc Letchie
Review of Eric Williams and the Anticolonial Tradition: The Making of a Diasporan Intellectual by Maurice St. Pierre
Artifacts of No Particular Meaning—Janelle Rodriques
Review of As Flies to Whatless Boys by Robert Antoni
Discussion
Poetry
Prose
Interviews
Haiti in Translation: Anacaona by Jean Métellus; An Interview with Susan Pickford—Nathan H. Dize