Jamaica’s 2002 Calabash International Literary Festival, held 24-26 May, enjoyed a special launch in New York earlier in the month. Staged for the second time in Treasure Beach, St Elizabeth, the festival was launched at Manhattan’s Explorers’ Club, where contemporary writers including Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes and Denise Shervington read from their works. The New York event was jointly hosted by the Jamaica Tourist Board (JTB) and New Yorker magazine, and also assisted in celebrating Jamaica’s 40th year of independence. Dawes observed in a news release that the agenda for Jamaican writing had changed in the years since: ‘In 1962, Jamaica caught the freedom train. Since then a group of writers have emerged to document and argue with the meaning and purpose of that journey. In the process they have changed the pitch and content of that crucial conversation... Something is happening here, something that is marked by complex writing that is at once sophisticated, confident and yet highly eclectic.’ Calabash is billed as the only festival of its kind in the Caribbean, and Channer, its founder and Artistic Director, noted that the event was conceived as a means of promoting arts development in the region. This year’s event took the theme ‘Babble on’, calling on individuals to celebrate and express themselves through words, whether they be in literature, theatre or music. Channer commented that Caribbean people are passionate and great storytellers, and that many young writers are now building upon this oral tradition. ‘They are broadening it, deepening it, redefining it in fascinating ways. There is so much to celebrate,’ he said. Meanwhile, Jamaica is also encouraging its filmmakers to promote themselves on the international stage, by entering the 2002 Commonwealth Vision Film Award. Last year’s award was won by Jamaican Veronica Warren, for her 90-second video, Give Your Hand Today.