A WORD AND MUSIC LIME on a theme of RESISTANCE featuring some of the UK, Caribbean and US's finest artists, thinkers and performers in a social and party-like atmosphere:
FRED D'AGUIAR: award-winning poet, novelist based in the US and on tour in the UK with his new memoir Year of Plagues (Carcanet, 2021)
CAMILLA GEORGE: saxophonist, composer and bandleader
TOBAGO CRUSOE: famed calypsonian, kaisonian, extempo artist
GABRIEL GBADAMOSI: acclaimed poet and playwright and a co-founder of WritersMosaic and producer and curator
MELANIE ABRAHAMS: curator, producer, founder of Renaissance One
You’ll experience poetry, prose, music, cocktails (and other drinks of choice) and conversation under one roof.
Go with the flow, unwind and join us!
(L to R) Fred D’Aguiar, Camilla George, Tobago Crusoe, Melanie Abrahams, Gabriel Gbadamosi
BIOS
FRED D'AGUIAR is a British-Guyanese poet, playwright and novelist. He is the author of eight poetry collections and five novels, including The Longest Memory which won the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. His poetry book, Letters to America was a Poetry Book Society Choice. He has lived in the US since the 1990s and he is currently Professor of English at University of California Los Angeles.
For D’Aguiar, 2020 was a year of personal and global crisis. The world around him was shattered by the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the US, California burned, and D’Aguiar was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. His latest book Year of Plagues (Carcanet, 2021) is an intimate, multifaceted memoir of these seismic events. Drawn from distinct cultural perspectives—his Caribbean upbringing, London youth and American lifestyle— D’Aguiar reimagines the memoir to create a lyrical, ferocious and uplifting book of existence, protest, and survival.
'sharply observed...Part of [D'Aguiar's] defiance in the face of cancer is to throw everything he has onto the page... his rage to live shivers in every sentence...' Dwight Garner, New York Times
CAMILLA GEORGE is a London based saxophone player, improviser, composer and teacher. In 2009 she joined award winning band, Jazz Jamaica and in 2014, she formed the Camilla George Quartet. Dubbed ''The Golden Girl of Jazz'' by the Evening Standard her music is a blend of Afrofuturism, hip hop and jazz. Camilla is a firm fixture on the new London Jazz scene alongside peers such as Nubya Garcia, Shabaka Hutchings and Zara McFarlane. Her latest album is The People Could Fly which explores the tales that slaves passed onto their children across generations.
TOBAGO CRUSOE is a calypsonian, composer, musician and a performing artist with over 30 years experience. He won the Calypso Crown in 1983 with "Don't Cry Now" and "South Africa". Crusoe has performed around the world to international audiences, including events in Madison Square Gardens, Turin, Barcelona and Germany and has collaborated with legendary performers Mighty Sparrow, Calypso Rose and Singing Sandra. He was Calypsonian-in-Residence at Renaissance One’s London Is The Place For Me Caribbean festival at the British Library in 2018. As lead singer of Calypso band ‘Tobago and D’Lime’ he and the band were featured in Paddington and Paddington 2. He was awarded a position in the Sunshine Awards Hall of Fame for his contribution to Calypso music (2011).
GABRIEL GBADAMOSI FRLF is an Irish and Nigerian poet, playwright and critic. His London novel Vauxhall (Telegram, 2013) won the Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize and Best International Novel at the Sharjah Book Fair. He was the AHRC Creative and Performing Arts Fellow at the Pinter Centre, Goldsmiths in British, European and African performance; a Judith E. Wilson Fellow for creative writing at Cambridge University; and Writer in Residence at the Manchester Royal Exchange Theatre. He formerly presented BBC Radio 3’s flagship arts and ideas programme Night Waves.
MELANIE ABRAHAMS FRSA FRSL is a curator, producer and mentor who is also founder of Renaissance One and Tilt, which make regular use of live events, tours and commissions to highlight the diverse British and international literature. Her contribution has been recognised through curatorships and speaker posts for the Bluecoat, Southbank Centre and Birkbeck. She is Curator and Caribbean Community Engagement Consultant for the Windrush Monument planned for London Waterloo station in 2022 and, with Rochelle Saunders, is in the Windrush Programme team for Seven Stories, Newcastle.