“Without memory, can there be history?”
—M. NourbeSe Philip
Our project is concerned with the Caribbean literary past and is particularly interested in neglected writers and writings at risk of being lost. We want to understand how fuller literary histories can be told and how their sources can be identified, preserved and made accessible. We hope that engaging with living writers across generations to raise awareness around the value of their manuscripts, correspondence and other papers, will help to safeguard future literary histories in the making.
We also recognise that literary heritage is a living connection between the present and the past, as much as a set of material sources, and are interested in what is relevant and inspiring for readers and researchers today.
We have worked towards…
- creating a fuller literary history of the Anglophone Caribbean
- recovering stories of forgotten writers and writings
- helping writers to become more aware of what to save of today’s manuscripts and papers for tomorrow’s researchers
- developing case studies of writers, especially those writing from the region, to understand the opportunities and challenges for creative and collecting practices
- creating spaces to connect academics, archivists and writers from the UK, Caribbean and beyond to discuss the changing nature of Caribbean literary history
- improving awareness of and accessibility to Caribbean literary papers
With thanks to our expert advisors Prof. Kenneth Ramchand, Ms. Lorraine Nero, and Prof. Evelyn O’Callaghan, and the LibraryPress@UF team at the University of Florida: Perry Collins, Ivette Rodriguez, Katherine Nguyen, and Robert Vives.
We have worked with…
Our fantastic and generous case study authors: Sharon Millar, M. NourbeSe Phillip, and Karen Lord.
- dLOC
- Special Collections, St Augustine
- Special Collections, Mona
- George Padmore Institute
- British Library
- The Keep
- BBC Written Archives, Caversham
- NGC Bocas Lit Fest
- Diasporic Literary Archives
- British Archive of Contemporary Writing
- National Library of Jamaica
Our conversations and connections with our project partners have been absolutely vital to our work and we are deeply grateful to all those who have contributed to the project.
