BCLF Cocoa Pod Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival

Bio - Antiguan and Barbudan writer Joanne C. Hillhouse is a self-described #gyalfromOttosAntigua She is the founder and president of Wadadli Pen Inc. a non-profit committed to nurturing and showcasing the literary arts in Antigua and Barbuda. More at wadadlipen.wordpress.com. Joanne has authored several books of fiction including the novel Oh Gad!, novellas The Boy from Willow Bend and Dancing Nude in the Moonlight, teen/young adult novel Musical Youth, and children's picture books With Grace...

On the verge of adulthood, Rafi attends the Lyceum, a school for the psionically gifted. Rafi possesses mental abilities that might benefit people . . . or control them. Some wish to help Rafi wield his powers responsibly; others see him as a threat to be contained. Rafi’s only freedom at the Lyceum is Wallrunning: a game of speed and agility played on vast vertical surfaces riddled with variable gravity fields.Serendipity and Ntenman are also students at the Lyceum, but unlike Rafi, they com...

Nightmare Island Twelve year-old Serenity Noah has never told anyone about her recurring nightmares -- the haunting images of silver butterflies whose flapping wings drive away all sound, leaving only suffocating silence in their wake. Her parents already favor her "perfect" younger brother, Peace, and she doesn't want to be seen as the "problem" child. Instead, Serenity's found a productive way to channel her fears: creating a horror movie as scary as her nightmares.When Peace suddenly becom...

Happy Caribbean-American Heritage Month to our listeners in the United States and Canada.To those in the islands, Happy Read Caribbean Month celebrations!Today’s Cocoa Pod episode is a promo swap with Always Lit, the BCLF interview-based series, that keeps the festival in yuh pocket always!Enjoy today’s conversation between Miami-based Caribbean-American voiceover maverick, Vanessa James, and Trinidadian writer Breanne McIvor discussing her new novel, The God of Good Looks

Grief is like an inside joke: you have to have been there to really get it.Everything Cassandra Rampersad knows about her family history has been overheard: whispered behind a closed door or written in a notebook stowed away. Cassandra has always been curious, and when a death in the family means she has to return home to Toronto, it seems like the perfect opportunity to finally discover what it is that no one else will talk about.But uncovering the past will never be easy when it has stayed ...

Combining the honesty, warmth, and humour of Queenie and a modern-day Bridget Jones’s Diary, award-winning writer Breanne Mc Ivor’s entertaining, transportive, and luminous debut novel follows a young Trinidadian woman finding her voice and a new kind of happy ending. Bianca Bridge has always dreamt of becoming a writer. But Trinidadian society can be unforgiving, and having an affair with a married government official is a sure-fire way to ruin your prospects. So when Obadiah Cortland, a not...