“To write the Caribbean well is to expose the authentic secrets — dark or lightness,” declares Leone Ross. The award-winning Jamaican-British novelist, short story writer, educator, and creative mentor will lead a three-part “Writing Desire” masterclass for the Bocas Academy.
The sessions, carded for 8, 15, and 22 March, will all be held virtually via Zoom, and are open to attendees worldwide. Registration for the masterclass, with a fee of TT$900, is currently open, with limited places remaining. Prospective students for “Writing Desire” should be working in prose — either novel-length or short-form fiction — and should be working at an intermediate level, e.g., at least one to three of their short stories should be published in online or print journals and magazines. Further information on registration is online at academy.bocaslitfest.com.
Ross, appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023, is the author of three novels and one short story collection; her latest novel, This One Sky Day (Faber & Faber), was longlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction. In 2021, Ross won the £10,000 Fiction Prize in the Manchester Writing Competition, one of the world’s most lucrative awards for short stories.
What makes a Caribbean storyteller’s voice unique is central to her objectives in her March masterclass. “We sound like no other hybridity on the face of the earth — we feel rare to me,” she says. “From the mix-up sound of us, to the hummingbirds and orchids you can’t find anywhere else. I’m also interested in ripping away the thick layers of stereotype. The world thinks they know what we are. They don’t.”
Ross’s tenure as an experienced instructor is extensive; she has taught creative writing for over twenty years, up to the PhD level. She has also served as a contest judge for numerous writing competitions, including the Spread the Word London Short Story Prize, the V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize, the Mslexia Short Fiction Award, and the Wimbledon Bookfest Competition. She is frank in her assessment of prose writers’ number one mistake in drafting material, saying, “I would give my right bosom to stop people using cliches. So much of it is the tired, screamingly obvious verb choices — throbbing, pulsating, heaving, swelling, blushing, flushing, giggling, caressing. None of these words will be allowed on this course.”
Citing numerous Caribbean writers who work at the pinnacle of their craft, Ross says, “There is an urgent and delicate way that Kei Miller writes about the body and the complex forbidden that gives me great pleasure. Lorna Goodison needs more flowers for her quiet revelations of desire. Olive Senior, it’s like she dunks her sentences in longing: to be understood, seen, heard. I also love the way Alexia Arthurs writes about transgressive sex. Walcott, his tenderness. And Shivanee Ramlochan — everything she writes, regardless of what it is, just drips and stops me. And of course I love Ingrid Persaud’s most recent The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh. They all have a bravery.”
Masterclass participants can expect rigorous practical exercises as well as a deep immersion in reading material. “I’m inviting people to leave better writers, with objective craft techniques they can use to write with guts, authenticity, and particularity,” she says. “Whatever stage of your process you are in, I want to help make you better. Doing that via the semantics of desire just makes the whole thing even more fun.”
Visit academy.bocaslitfest.com for details.
