Please join us in congratulating David Scott whose editing of Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism has been recognized by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals as the winner of its Distinguished Editor prize. There will be an award ceremony at the upcoming Modern Language Association convention in Philadelphia this week. You can read more about the prize here. 

Praise for Small Axe:

“The journal distills the finest of Caribbean intellectualism, so that it may be related to predecessors such as Tropiques or Bim, but it surpasses them too, not just in longevity, but in setting and observing new currents in Caribbean thought, literature, social studies, and visual art.” --Martin Munro, Florida State University 

“Small Axe edited and published under Scott’s vision has become one of most relevant intellectual and creative publications for our current political, social and cultural climate. Small Axe continues to reflect the ‘problem space’ of the contemporary global moment.” --Roshini Kempadoo, University of Westminster 

“It remains a moment of pure joy for me to receive and unwrap Small Axe editions that I have come to expect to be visual as well as visually theoretical feasts; to be anglophone, francophone, hispanophone, as well as thoroughly regional in orientation; and to be interdisciplinary.” --Faith Smith, Brandeis University  

“What Scott did since the 90s was to create an intellectual space that would absorb the Caribbean wherever it existed in pockets, drawing Caribbean thinkers, academics, intellectual workers or artists in the United States, Britain or Europe, linking these with scholars and practitioners who continued to live and work in the Caribbean region and thus cross fertilizing a dialogue that has been bountiful and unending.” --Patricia Mohammed, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine 

Program arranged by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals

Book Review Session Thursday, 5 January, 3:30–4:45 p.m., 110A, Pennsylvania Convention Center. Award Ceremony will begin at4:15pm

The Small Axe Project held the third installment of its Caribbean Digital event on Friday, 2 December 2016 at Columbia University’s Maison Française.  Conceptualized and organized by Alex Gil, Kaiama L. Glover, and Kelly Baker Josephs, The Caribbean Digital began convening annually in 2014 to focus on the digital sphere as praxis—exploring the exciting innovations and opportunities as well as the challenges the digital presents in the field of Caribbean Studies.

The symposium brought together curators, graduate students, faculty, librarians, and archivists – a continuation of the Small Axe Project’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and to highlighting the vibrant futures of more accessible research across the so-called Global South. The event’s five multiform panels – “Digital Diasporic Religion,” “Mapping Caribbean Concepts,” “Tales from the Archive,” “Multimedia Melting Pots,” and “Caribbean Digital Praxis” – considered the affordances and limitations of the digital across a wide variety of intellectual perspectives and research methodologies. The closing reception, also held at the Maison Française, featured Bahamian documentarian and visual artist Tamika Galanis’s work, “The Human-Coral Hybrids: Embodying Past, Present, and Future,” and Miami-Trinidadian visual artist Kearra Amaya Gopee’s work “Coup.” You can read more about these artists here.

Glover said of the event: "The fact that folks have consistently responded to our conference call with ever-greater enthusiasm over the years is heartening. It makes it very clear that the conversations we think are important to be having about the Caribbean digital are equally important to our community. If crowds are indeed of any value as a source, the feedback we've gotten during and since the event suggests that the work people presented is as inspired and inspiring as we ​anticipated when we put together the program. We look forward to TCDIV in December of next year"

Discussions over the course of the day-long conference picked up themes addressed in the wide-ranging 2014 inaugural event and during the focused conversations of the 2015 colloquium. The organizers look forward to featuring more fully developed  versions of several presentations in sx archipelagos, the peer-reviewed Small Axe Project publishing platform dedicated to Caribbean digital scholarship and scholarship of the Caribbean digital.

Additional information on this year’s event, as well as past iterations of The Caribbean Digital can be found on the website, here.

Winners, runners-up and shortlist

It is our pleasure to announce the 2016 Small Axe Literary Competition winners and runners-up in the short fiction and poetry categories. The works of these artists will be published in Small Axe 53, July 2017.

Since its inauguration in 2009, the Small Axe Literary Competition has been at the vanguard of spotting emerging Caribbean writers. Many of our carefully selected winners during the last six years have moved on to sign contracts with esteemed publishing houses. This is not a coincidence. The Small Axe Literary Competition's changing panel of judges is continuously represented by some of the best creative writers working within the Caribbean region and its diaspora. These judges excel in identifying extraordinary literary achievements. This year’s judges include Diana McCaulay, Monique Roffey, and Sasenarine Persaud in the short fiction category, and James Christopher Aboud, Honor Ford-Smith, and Tanya Shirley in the poetry competition. You can find the judges’ bios on our website here. Take a look into our Literary Competition archive to learn about past judges and winners.

This year we received a record number of submissions in both the poetry and short fiction categories. Outstanding entries from across the region and its diaspora have each been thoroughly evaluated and ranked in a blind review process. While the high quality of each submission challenges the selection process, two submissions in each category were particularly noticeable.

Short Fiction

First Place: “Mango Feast” by Portia Subran, of Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago

Portia Subran is a Trinidadian artist and writer. Her artwork has been featured in Arc magazine, children’s novels and has been displayed at the Art Society of Trinidad and Tobago end of year exhibitions. In 2013, she was announced the winner of the Potbake Productions 2011-2013 Caribbean Short Story Competition with her work, “Unclipped Wings.” This work was later published in the short story collection Jewels of the Caribbean. Her short story “A New Life in a New Time” was published in the 2016 speculative fiction anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean. 

You can learn more about Subran’s art and writing and connect with her on social media on Facebook and Instagram

Second Place: “Public Notice” by Ayanna Gillian Lloyd, of Diego Martin, Trinidad and Tobago

Ayanna Gillian Lloyd is a fiction and creative non-fiction writer from Trinidad and Tobago.  Her work has been published in The Caribbean Writer and shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Competition and the Wasafiri New Writing Prize. She has also been featured in the Bocas Lit Fest “Who's Next?” segment in 2014 and 2015. She is a Consulting Fiction Editor of Moko magazine and a 2016 Callaloo Writing Workshop Fellow.

Poetry

First Place: “Learning to Swim” by Soyini Ayanna Forde, of Trinidad and Tobago

Soyini Ayanna Forde grew up and spent the majority of her life in Trinidad and Tobago. Her poetry and creative nonfiction can be found in Apogee, Cleaver, Moko, sx salon, the Caribbean Writer and and Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire. Taste of Hibiscus, her poetry chapbook, is available from Dancing Girl Press. Her fiction appears inside Akashic Books’ Duppy Thursday series and St. Somewhere Journal. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her writing was listed as a notable essay of 2016 in The Best American Essays. A graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program, she resides in Florida, pines for fresh Julie mango and blogs about race, feminism and West Indian pop culture while working on her first full-length collection of poems.

Second Place: “Extra Lessons” by Chenee Daley, originally from Savanna-la-mar now living in Kingston, Jamaica

Chenee Daley notes: I’m a Westmoreland transplant, who found myself, some years ago, in Kingston. I try to live my life exhaustingly but I also don’t do anything I don’t love anymore. At the moment I’m completing a degree in Literature with a minor in music at the UWI Mona. I write very vulnerable poetry but also dabble in other short-form writing like songs.

Congratulations to our winners!

The Shortlist
Below is the shortlist compiled by our judges. These are writers to look out for in the future. We are delighted to share their names and the titles of their entries with our readers below.

Short Fiction

“The Mango Tree” by Lisa J. Latouche, of Roseau, Dominica

“African Burial Ground” by Heather Barker, of St. Thomas, Barbados

“Ma Diablesse” by Brandon Mc Ivor, of Trinidad who now lives in Yawatahama, Japan

“Purgatorium” by Rae-ann Smith, of San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago

“The Seascape” by Hazel McShine, of Maraval, Trinidad and Tobago

Poetry

“Lajablesse in Oakland” by Rosamond S. King, of Brooklyn, New York, USA

“Message from Nur Al-Masri” by Sharif El Gammal-Ortiz, of Carolina, Puerto Rico

“Darkening/Freeport” by Richard Georges, of Tortola, British Virgin Islands

“Afterbirth” by Summer Edward, of Realspring Valsayn, Trinidad, now lives in Philadelphia, USA

“The Best Medicine” by Juleus Ghunta, of Jamaica, now lives in Tottori-ken, Japan

“The Dog Breeders House” by Ioney Smallhorne, of Nottingham, England

“Eureka!” by Jannine T. Horsford, of Glencoe, Trinidad and Tobago 

If you are an emerging writer in the Caribbean, you should already be starting to think about your contribution to our 2017 Literary Competition. Please check our website in March when the competition will open for submissions. The deadline for new submissions will be April 2017. Keep in mind that from 2017 we will accept submissions in English, French, and Spanish.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Please join us on Friday, 18 November 2016 for a reception celebrating 20 years of Small Axe.

When: Friday, 18 November 2016 from 4:00pm-5:30pm 

Where: At the Duke University Press booths (204-206) in the exhibit hall at the American Studies Association meeting in Denver, Colorado

Come meet the Editor, David Scott, and other members of the Small Axe Project. There will be a wine and cheese reception with Small Axe posters and tote bags as giveaway items. 

We look forward to seeing you there!