Search results for ""Papillote Press""

"A woman I won’t forget ... a book that people will love.” Diana Athill, Jean Rhys' publisher and award-winning biographer. "My aunt's love of Dominica and its people is as freshly painted as if it happened yesterday." Katie Fforde, novelist. Elma Napier's remarkable memoir chronicles her love affair with the wild Caribbean island of Dominica. It began in 1932 when she turned her back on London's high society to build a home in Calibishie, a remote village on Dominica's north coast. There are tales of literary house parties, of war and death, smugglers and servants and, above all, of stories inspired by her political life as the only woman in a colonial parliament. She writes deftly about the island's turbulent landscapes and her curiosity about the lives and culture of its people. Elma Napier was born in Scotland in 1892, the daughter of Sir William Gordon Cumming, who was accused of cheating while playing cards with the Prince of Wales. After living in Australia for nine years, Napier settled in Dominica with her second husband in 1932. She became the first woman to sit in any West Indian parliament. Apart from Black and White Sands (written in 1962), she wrote two novels and two memoirs of her early life. She died in Dominica in 1973.

Read more less

"Crime writing with a harsh edge." - Nicholas Clee, The Guardian"An original and stimulating debut. The narratives are steeped in Caribbean storytelling traditions which Shillingord exploits to deliver penetrating insights on the joys and sorrows of life." - Mike Phillips, award-winning crime writer."The humour made me both chuckle and laugh out loud. What lifts this collection above the usual bang-bang crime story is its attempt to unpick the bigger issues facing the Caribbean. Shillingford deftly and confidently creates stories, which are concerned with dealing with the effects of crime on people's lives. Christborne Shillingford is an exciting and unique addition to the genre." - Dreda Say Mitchell, award-winning crime writer.A first collection from a new voice in crime fiction. Christborne Shillingford's short stories have an anarchic style chronicling the Caribbean adventures of a very amateur detective whose special knack is getting in (and out of) street scrapes. He escapes from drug dens, bent policemen, ghosts, disdainful girlfriends and crazy dogs. These are crime tales from "the block" - a modern, irreverent look straight from the back streets of Dominica.This is Christborne Shillingford's first book. He lives in rural Dominica, his birthplace.

Read more less

What happened to the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean in the wake of the European onslaught? All but a few were wiped out. This remarkable book explores the history and culture of those who survived: the Kalinagos of Dominica - from resistance, to refuge and now revival.

Read more less

This "magnificent act of scholarship" is a comprehensive author index of poetry, prose (fiction and non-fiction) and drama from the eastern Caribbean island of Saint Lucia. It also includes supporting materials, such as dissertations and critical works, which offer studies of the works of Saint Lucian writers, including Nobel Laureates such as Derek Walcott and the economist, Sir Arthur Lewis. While it lists the work of the internationally acclaimed of Saint Lucia, it also includes humbler literary contributions, such as recipe books and funeral programmes. Nothing that has contributed to the island's rich artistic legacy is omitted.

Read more less

"A moving coming of age story packed with tropical adventure." – Ros AsquithTeenage twins James and Jerome discover that treasure, buried during the days of slavery, is their rightful inheritance. As the boys de-code the clues that will lead to the treasure, they have some strange encounters: there's a helpful parrot, a ghostly figure from the past and a legless man who can walk; they escape from a falling tower and discover a boiling lake. And, of course, there's also an evil stranger who confronts them in an exciting climax.Abraham's Treasure mixes a classical hunt-the-treasure plot with a hint of magical realism to give a real page-turning quality. The twins are typical teenagers who have some very untypical experiences as they desperately strive to reach the treasure – whatever that may be – before their adversary. Great for boys but girls, too, will identify with the twins and also with Petra, an annoying neighbour who is just as smart as they are. And the wild landscape of Dominica makes it a perfect location for a spot of treasure-hunting.Joanne Skerrett was born and brought up in Dominica. She moved with her family to the United States during the 1980s. She graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a BA in English and later attended Northeastern University where she earned an MBA. She also holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. She has been a journalist on newspapers including the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune. Joanne lives in Washington DC where she works as a lawyer. Abraham's Treasure is her fifth novel and her first book for young people.

Read more less

The Maroons (escaped slaves) of Jamaica are famous. Not so the Maroons of another Caribbean island - Dominica, also a former British colony. Dominica's Maroons once controlled much of this wild and mountainous island but few details of their story of resistance and ultimate defeat have been known - until now. Written by Dominica's leading historian, In the Forests of Freedom is a stirring account of how a displaced and enslaved people fought to create a free and self-sufficient society. From the Africans who took refuge on the island in the 16th century, through the two brutal Maroon Wars in the last decades of slavery, to the building of a post-emancipation nation, In the Forests of Freedom takes the reader deep into the hinterland of the Dominica story.

Read more less

Riff explores the turbulent life of the Caribbean musician and poet Shake Keane (1927-97). A wanderer, he absorbed many of the themes of the 20th century - colonialism, migration and masculinity. Each of them found expression in his work. Born in St Vincent, he migrated to London in the early 1950s where he became an important figure in the free form jazz scene. A return to his birthplace was blighted by politics, and his last decades were spent in New York City and Norway where he experienced a degree of emotional peace despite financial difficulties. This biography reveals the many features of the life of this trend-setting but troubled Caribbean icon.

Read more less

Gone to Drift is an award-winning coming-of-age adventure story set in Jamaica. Life gets even tougher for Lloyd, a boy from a fishing village, when his grandfather goes missing at sea - 'gone to drift' as the local fishers say. Lloyd sets out to find him but no one will help except an uptown girl who studies dolphins, his best friend Dwight and - just perhaps - a mad man called Slowly on a sun-baked beach. Truth? Respect? Survival? Remembering what Maas Conrad had taught him about the old ways, Lloyd discovers that the enemies of the sea - and his grandfather - are closer to home than he could imagine.

Read more less

"Frankness and insight." New West India GuideWhat happens when people return to the land of their birth after decades away? The migrants' journey is a well-told story but much less is known about those who return. Why do they go back? What is it like to be back home? Home Again is a collection of contemporary real-life stories by men and women who have returned to Dominica. Their feelings and experiences, expressed in their own words, link the challenges of the past to both the positive aspects of return – a sense of belonging and well-being – and also to its difficulties – of rejection and frustration.Compelling, moving and intensely personal, Home Again, is a revealing insight into the lives of these pioneering migrants.

Read more less

This new collection of short stories from an award-winning writer explores a Caribbean world of yearnings and memory, of escape and return underpinned by the disturbing tensions wrought by religion, race, sexuality and crime.Sensuous and evocative, Scott's prose has a glorious lightness of touch and tone that exhilarates and illuminates.Lawrence Scott is a prize-winning Caribbean novelist and short-story writer who was born on a sugar estate in Trinidad.He has been short-listed for Commonwealth writers' prizes three times, long-listed for the Whitbread Prize and the Booker Prize and was winner of the Tom-Gallon Short Story Award. His latest novel is Light Falling on Bamboo (Profile Books, 9781781251584) about the 19th-century painter Jean Michel Cazabon. Leaving by Plane Swimming Back Underwater is his second short-story collection. He lives and works in both London and Port of Spain, Trinidad.This book is also available as a eBook. Buy it from Amazon here.

Read more less

A crime story set in the rural Caribbean where traditional allegiances and a flawed criminal justice system provide a backdrop to the rape and murder of a young girl. When her father is accused of the crime, her brother joins the police to try and clear their father's name. While the suspect languishes in jail on remand, the young detective makes some alarming discoveries.

Read more less

"What a powerful writer…. A Caribbean One Hundred Years of Solitude." Fay Weldon"Why was this book overlooked?" Salman Rushdie"Rare and magical. The first of its kind… wonderful evocative language; complete emotional range; a loving, touching insight into human and family relationships. Sam SelvonWitchbroom is a visionary history of a Caribbean Spanish/French Creole family and an island over four centuries to 20th-century independence. With an innovative tone and content, its carnival tales of crime and passion are told by the narrator Lavren, who is both male and female.First published in 1992, Witchbroom became a Caribbean classic. The follow-ing year it became a BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime, broadcast over eight nights and read by the author. It was shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writers Prize Best First Book.A pioneering work, it heralded a new generation of modernist Caribbean writers who, like Scott, broke away from a predominantly realist literary tradition; Witchbroom identifes more with magic realism. A richly entertaining and many layered read, its hermaphrodite narrator brings a contemporary flavour to the novel.The title Witchbroom refers to a fungus that attacks cocoa trees, and is also used as a metaphor for the decline of the island s plantocracy.

Read more less

Look Back! is a children's picture book written by the great team of Trish Cooke (words) and Caroline Binch (illustrations), both of whom are distinguished contributors to children's literature. A magical tale set in the Caribbean and a wonderful evocation of the oral story-telling traditions of the region, it celebrates the relationship between a grandmother (from Dominica) and her grandson as she tells him about her childhood adventures in the rainforest and her encounters with the mysterious Ti Bolom. The rhythms and repetitive patterns of Caribbean language are a rich component of the story – as is typical of Trish's work – and the illustrations have that marvellous realism that is a hallmark of Caroline's many successful books.Trish Cooke (author) is an award-winning author, scriptwriter and actress of Dominican heritage. Born in Bradford, she was inspired to write mostly by her parents who were great storytellers. Her most popular children's book, So Much (illustrated by Helen Oxenbury) won the 0-5 category of the Smarties Book Prize and the Kurt Maschler Award in 1994. She has written plays for stage, TV and radio, including pantomimes, and also runs creative writing workshops.Caroline Binch (illustrator) is an award-winning children's author and illustrator who is probably best known for her illustrations for Amazing Grace, which has become an international best-seller. Her book Hue Boy (written by Rita Phillips Mitchell) won the Smarties Gold Award in 1993 and Gregory Cool, which she wrote and illustrated, was highly commended for the Kate Greenaway medal. Caroline was born in Manchester but now lives by the sea in Cornwall.

Read more less

Still Standing is a celebration of the vanishing vernacular architecture of Dominica. These small wooden homes, ingeniously crafted and carefully adapted to their environment, have survived hurricanes and earthquakes; in contrast to many modern concrete buildings, they are ‘still standing’. Even so, they are under threat from the forces of ‘development’. The stories and images in this book provide powerful evidence for vernacular conservation that will inspire new respect for the island’s history and culture.

Read more less

A coming-of-age tale with a twist: a clinically depressed Trinidadian teenager, who has attempted suicide, is banished by her mother to Canada to live with her aunt. She feels lonely and in exile. But with the help of her lesbian aunt, a gorgeous-looking boy and her Skyping best friend "back home" in Trinidad, she begins to realise that loving families can exist in different shapes and sizes. Then her mother arrives and threatens to take her back to Trinidad. Where then is home?

Read more less

This radical and moving historical novel weaves fact with fiction to reveal "the great deception" exercised by the powerful on a mixed race child born in the late 18th century and brought up in the London home of England's Lord Chief Justice. Dido Belle was the daughter of an African-born slave and the sea-faring nephew of Lord Mansfield. She was freed only on Mansfield's death and became Elizabeth D'Aviniere on her marriage. Scott imagines Elizabeth's adult world where she reflects on her disturbed childhood and fears for her own children's safety at risk from slave catchers. Above all, she yearns for her lost mother. Why did she no longer write? Had she, too, been recaptured? The novel builds to a powerful denouement as the events of Elizabeth's past engage with the traumas of her present.

Read more less

It is 1957 in Marianao, a suburb of Havana. Adela Santiago is 13 years old and lives in a small blue house with her mother, father, brother, and grandfather. And yet something is amiss. The students on her street are disappearing. Not only that but her parents' marriage seems to be disintegrating and her cousin is caught up in a bombing at the Hotel Nacional. Welcome to a world where a revolution is brewing. Welcome to Cuba.

Read more less

Saying goodnight to all things we love on a tropical island. Animals, birds, fish, fruits and forests, drums and dances, the rivers and the rain, all get put to bed as the sun goes down in this poetic and visually stimulating journey.

Read more less

Set in the Caribbean - from Jamaica to Trinidad, Barbados to Dominica, the author's birthplace - this sparkling collection of stories from one of the Caribbean's foremost cultural activists is full of surprises, both in style and intent. Written across five decades, the characters and plots have a compelling intimacy and warmth that reflect the tragedies and triumphs of the region. As Colin Channer, the Jamaican writer and founder of the Calabash festival puts it: 'With this collection, he is allowing us into the attic and cellar of his imagination, where he has stored astonishing histories and legacies. We are all the richer for his generosity, storytelling, grace, and for the artistic impulse beating at these stories' heart.'

Read more less

A pioneering Pan Africanist, Garveyite and poet from the Caribbean island of Dominica, JR Ralph Casimir (1898-1996) played an important role as agent and organiser in the eastern Caribbean for Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and the Black Star Line. For more than half a century, he fearlessly confronted not just colonial rule but his island’s elites. This biography, lovingly written by his grand-daughter, explores his political and personal life, and sheds much light on little known aspects of Dominica’s march to independence.

Read more less

A joy to read, says TS Eliot prize winner Roger Robinson. This first poetry collection by the award-winning Trinidadian novelist Lawrence Scott reflects on the paintings and places of of the 19th-century Trinidadian artist Michel Jean Cazabon, the subject of Scott's novel, Light Falling on Bamboo. Beautifully crafted, these highly regarded poems, most in sonnet form, celebrate the landscape of Trinidad and remembrance of loves and old friendships while evoking both the historical and contemporary violence of its society.

Read more less

Three white sisters return to their Caribbean island home to find their family living in poverty and mental anguish. Each sister responds to the family's plight in different ways - seeking change through romance or politics or money. Intenselyautobiographical, The Orchid House describes a colonial society in decay as seen through the (usually) loyal eyes of the sisters' childhood nurse, Lally: "Beauty and disease, beauty and sickness, beauty and horror: that was the island."First published in 1953, it was republished in 1982 as a Virago Modern Classic. It was later filmed by Channel 4 for a four-part series (1991) with Diana Quick, Frances Barber and Elizabeth Hurley (available as a DVD).This edition has a new and incisive introduction by the Dominican scholar Schuyler Esprit, which casts a fresh and contemporary eye on Allfrey's life and work.

Read more less

This delightful children's book - the first to be written by local children in Dominica - tells the story of the myth of the Kalinago snake called Bakwa. Like all myths it has changed down the centuries and this version is an adaptation by a primary school class who, from their own knowledge and their own imaginations, came up with this lively tale. The Kalinago people from Dominica in the eastern Caribbean were the island's first inhabitants. After the Europeans arrived they gradually lost their land. Now they live on part of the island known as the Kalinago Territory where you will see a rocky "staircase" coming out of the sea. It is called L'Escalier Tete Chien and means "the staircase of the snake" in the Dominican Creole language. This is where, according to the myth, Bakwa came out of the sea, slithered on to the land - the rocks are the marks his belly left - and went up to his cave. He will stay there sleeping until the world is at peace again. Pupils from Year 6 (the top year of primary level) of Atkinson School, Dominica, wrote the words for The Snake King of the Kalinago. The illustrations were produced in the early 1990s in a workshop by a Kalinago Territory youth group.

Read more less

There is renewed interest in Phyllis Shand Allfrey, author (the Orchid House) and politician from Dominica. Allfrey died in 1986 - her poetry neglected and little known. Her work is now being acclaimed and her place in Caribbean literary cannon assured.Allfrey's biographer, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, writes in her illuminating introduction that with the renewed academic interest in Allfrey's work and the publication of this collection, Allfrey's time has come. The volume includes all the poems published in her lifetime, some unpublished poems and a sample of her satirical poems written when she was editor and publisher of The Star newspaper in Dominica.This is the first time her poetry has been put together in one volume, spanning five decades, from the 1930s, and reflects the two strands of Allfrey's life - the tropical and the temperate.Phyllis Shand Allfrey was born in Dominica in the eastern Caribbean in 1908. She was a friend of Jean Rhys. Her novel, The Orchid House, was published in 1953 and her short story collection, It Falls into Place, in 2004. She lived in New York and London before returning to Dominica in the early 1950s. She was the co-founder of the Dominica Labour Party and served as a minister in the short-lived West Indies Federation (1958-62). She died in Dominica in 1986.The introduction is by Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Professor of Caribbean Literature at Vassar College New York. Her biography of Allfrey, A Caribbean Life, was published in 1996.

Read more less