Online Event: Julia Alvarez Presents Afterlife with Barbara Jenkins

Featuring

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  Julia Alvarez

  Julia Alvarez

  Julia Alvarez left the Dominican Republic for the United States in 1960 at the age of ten. She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. She has taught and mentored writers in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer-in-residence at Middlebury College. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine, and inclusion in the New York Public Library’s program “The Hand of the Poet: Original Manuscripts by 100 Masters, from John Donne to Julia Alvarez.” In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

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  Barbara Jenkins

  Barbara Jenkins

  After a lifetime of school teaching, corporate training, and textbook writing for secondary schools, Barbara Jenkins now devotes her time to creative writing and active engagement with civil society to make Trinidad and Tobago the place we who live here know it can be. She holds a BSc and a DipEd from the University of Wales and an MFA from the UWI, St Augustine. She has developed and presented workshops in fiction and memoir writing for The Arvon Foundation; The Bocas Lit Fest; The Blue Flamingo Literary Festival, The Bahamas, and as a Master in the Mentoring by the Master’s program of The Ministry of Community Development Culture and the Arts, T&T. Her stories have won numerous local, regional and international awards. She is the author of Sic Transit Wagon and Other Stories, winner of The Guyana Prize for Literature, Caribbean Region, and De Rightest Place, shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize. Civil society engagement includes directorships in The Dyslexia Association of T&T, The PALM Foundation, The National Museum and Art Gallery of T&T. She is a chorister with The Lydian Singers, a Friend of the Botanic Gardens T&T, a Patron of Queens Hall, a Member of the National Trust T&T, and a friend of Bocas Lit Fest.