Calabash International Literary Festival
“Why is it that reggae achieved global status, but very little else did?” This question appears near the end of this NYT piece about the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica, but this question — posed by Kwame Dawes, one of the founders of Calabash — encapsulates some of my own thoughts about not just literary festivals (or book festivals, or whatever you’d like to call them), but about the role of books in the greater “entertainment” ecosystem. In the case of Calabash, the festival has “strive[d] to create an authenticating pipeline for Jamaican writers along the lines of what brought local musicians international attention.” Booker winner Marlon James “was ready to give up writing” until he attended a Calabash session in 2000. (!!)
The best literary events, IMO, do three things: 1) Introduce festival-goers to new books/authors; 2) Allow festival-goers to hear from renowned authors (Did Matt and I get to see Salman Rushdie in a relatively intimate setting with The Edge in attendance? Yes, yes we did…***); 3) Maybe most importantly, provide festival-goers with ways to connect with their community vis a vis interesting events that illuminate “the placeness of a place” — to borrow a phrase from Banana Yoshimoto.
As we prepare to move, I’m sort of tying up Phase 1 of my own experience with producing literary events (I founded MetroWest Readers Fest but I also started out producing some literary events just as “me” back in 2019). I’m curious if there will be a Phase 2. (As far as I know, Charlotte has no dedicated book festival, just sayin’…)
Joyce Carol Oates appeared at Calabash this year and declared that “The regional is universal.” If music can help amplify “the placeness of a place” … then so can books.
{*** I can’t remember if this event was free or not, but if it did cost money (possible since Salman Rushdie is world-famous), it was very, very little. Many literary events are free to attend FYI.}
{In 2020, I wrote a piece for Boston Book Blog (now known as Literary Boston) about the role of “readers” in literary events, i.e. making events “reader-focused” instead of solely “writer-focused.” You can read it here.}
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