Montserrat’s Alliouagana Festival of the Word is back for its 13th staging this November. The festival, set to be a blend of online and offline events, has been scheduled for November 18-20 under the theme Our Future, Our Stories.

Festival Coordinator Nerissa Golden of Goldenmedia said she was delighted to be facilitating another exciting programme to celebrate the best of Montserrat’s literature.

Golden and the festival committee will be partnering with the Montserrat Arts Council and the Ministry of Education through the Montserrat Public Library and the local primary schools for this year’s festival. The library will host a week-long exhibition called Write Montserrat: A Literary Retrospective of Our Island’s Authors. Opening on Monday, November 15, the display will showcase the works of local authors in a variety of genres.

“Montserratians at home and abroad have been contributing to building our literature in many fields. We are honoured to present this collection for visitors to the library to enjoy,” said Sonja Smith, Librarian and Exhibit Curator.

The Book Parade will be held on Thursday, November 18 and allows primary school children to bring their favourite storybook characters to life in costumes in a colourful street parade.

The Arrow Symposium has been moved to the evening of Friday, November 19, and will be aired virtually on the festival’s Facebook page.

There will be two panels on the programme with one looking at Harnessing the Power of Arrow’s Legacy while the other will explore ‘What is the Story of Montserrat in the Future?’

The Saturday morning workshops will also be held online and focus on various aspects of digital publishing from idea to final production and sales. These workshops are sponsored by the Montserrat Public Library.

New publications from seven of the island’s authors will be celebrated at the Saturday evening gala. Featured books include Edwin “Red Ride” Martin’s A Century of Montserrat’s Cricket, Marguerite Joseph’s Lady Under the Stairs and Norman Ryan’s Memoir. The fundraising event aims to highlight these new works which run the spectrum from poetry to business and self-help.

“Due to travel restrictions and other limitations, many of our authors have not been able to share their work in a public forum with readers and we believe that the literary festival is positioned to change this. We want to encourage the continued creation of our stories as this is how we shape the future,” Golden said.

Interested parties can follow the 2021 literary festival activities on Facebook at AFWLitFest or via #AFWLitFest.