image from http://acwws.org/

Professors Myriam J. A. Chancy, Angeletta Gourdine, and Solimar Otero have received a Louisiana Board of Regents enhancement grant to host the 12th International Conference of the Association of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars at LSU, April 20-24, 2010.  

Jamaican poet and leading West Indian writer, Lorna Goodison, will deliver the keynote address.

Featured writers will include:

• Mayra Santos-Febres, Puerto Rican poet, novelist, critic, and professor of literature
• Lakshmi Persaud, Caribbean novelist of the Indian diaspora
• Fabienne Kanor Marie-Celie Agnant, Haitian and Quebequois novelist, poet, and children's book author
• Ismene Krishnadath, Surinamese author of stories and novels for young readers.  

Featured artist will be

• Deborah Jack, from St. Martin,  whose work constructs a personal/ cultural history based on ancestral or re-memory using painting, video, photography, sound art and poetry.

According to the conference organizers, “The unique position of Louisiana as a historical and cultural point of encounter with the Caribbean gives us the opportunity to consider a re-conceptualization of the ‘Caribbean' in terms of its Diasporas and connections to the Americas. Our conference theme, Caribbean Dislocations / Caribbean Diasporas, urges explorations and interceptions of ‘traditional' notions of regions, boundaries, movement, and portable identities, as well as explorations between merging Caribbean, Latino, and African Diasporas.”