Walcott Lecture on Tuesday

THE Cultural Development Foundation in collaboration with the Nobel Laureate Committee is pleased to present the Derek Walcott Lecture for 2017 – the twenty fourth commemoration, saluting Saint Lucia’s two Nobel Laureates.

Nobel Laureate Week was inaugurated to celebrate the achievements of the island’s accomplished sons – Sir Arthur Lewis; who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1979 and Sir Derek Walcott for Literature in 1992. January 23rd, is considered Nobel Laureate Day, as both laureates share the same birth date; Lewis born in 1915 and Walcott in 1930.

Acclaimed literary figures, have from 1993 been invited to deliver lectures in Sir Derek Walcott’s honour. They have included Rosanna Warren (2016), Raoul Peck (2015), Caryl Phillips (2014) and Sudeep Sen (2013). This year’s Derek Walcott Lecture will be presented by Antigua born, Jamaica Kincaid. Kincaid is an essayist and novelist whose body of work has been well documented and spans 1983 to the present, among them A Small Place (1988), My Brother (1997) and See Now Then (2013). The professor of African and American Studies in Residence at Harvard University will deliver a lecture; Our Homer: Derek Walcott from 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, at the National Cultural Centre. Following the lecture, members of the audience will engage in a discussion and participate in the creation of a word collage during a meet and greet session.

Professor Kincaid will on Monday meet with Literature teachers from around the island to dialogue on “Literature, the writer and the work”. This collaboration between CDF and the CAMDU Language and Theatre Arts Department takes place at Walcott House on Chaussee Road from 10:00 am – 12:00 noon.