The Caribbean Review of Books, the Trinidad-based quarterly magazine of Caribbean literature and arts, resumes publication this month, after a hiatus of nearly two years — with new support from the Bocas Lit Fest.
Published online at www.caribbeanreviewofbooks.com, the CRB reviews new and recent Caribbean books alongside interviews with writers, original poems and fiction, and essays on literature and culture. It is free to all readers, with no subscription fee.
With the November 2013 issue, the CRB begins a partnership with the Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literature festival. “The alliance makes perfect sense,” says CRB editor Nicholas Laughlin, who is also the programme director of the Bocas Lit Fest. “Both magazine and festival have the same fundamental aims: to build a readership for books from and about the Caribbean, bring new writers to a broader audience, and provoke conversation about literature and its place in society.”
Though supported by the festival, the CRB will maintain its editorial independence. “The CRB’s literary coverage will obviously inform the festival, and the festival programme will turn up writers and books that the CRB ought to cover,” Laughlin adds.
The November 2013 issue of the CRB includes reviews of recent books of fiction, poetry, and literary studies, as well as pieces on film and contemporary art, and new poems by an emerging Trinidadian writer.
The original CRB was published from 1991 to 1994 in Mona, Jamaica. In May 2004, the magazine was revived by a team of writers and editors based in Port of Spain. The last print edition was published in 2009, and in 2010 the CRB was relaunched as an online magazine.
In the nine and a half years since the CRB was revived in 2004, the magazine has reviewed several hundred Caribbean books, and published writing by such literary luminaries as Derek Walcott, Martin Carter, and Lorna Goodison, as well as celebrated younger writers like Kei Miller, Vahni Capildeo, Marlon James, Shara McCallum, and Christian Campbell. Novelist and poet David Dabydeen has written, “I think CRB is the most important development in the region, in literary criticism, for generations.”