Computech personnel (third left) received the St. Martin Book Fair Presidents Award on behalf of the company from USM president Antonio Carmona Báez (fifth left), with Book Fair coordinator Shujah Reiph (third right) and Book Fair committee members with baby Thelwell (left) looking on at the literary evening and closing ceremony of the 18th annual St. Martin Book Fair, on Saturday, June 6, 2020. (HNP photo)
MARIGOT--Dr. Verene A. Shepherd and Computech received the Presidents Award at the closing of the eighteenth edition of the three-day St. Martin Book Fair on Saturday, June 6. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the “coming-of-age” edition of the book fair was held online by video screening on Facebook.
“The Presidents Award was accepted by Computech personnel on behalf of the company and Dr. Verene Shepherd’s award will be delivered to her in Jamaica by courier,” said book fair coordinator Shujah Reiph.
The awards presentation was made in Computech’s conference room, which served as the studio for managing and transmitting the closing ceremony of the literary festival on Facebook.
Computech hosted the Zoom platform management and the transmission of the three-day book fair to Internet audiences of over 5,000 “views,” said Reiph.
“The Presidents Award is presented to individuals and institutions whose work is noted for its excellence and for combining literary, cultural and liberation components in the service of progress of their people or nation, and of humanity,” said projects director at House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP) Lasana M. Sekou.
Shepherd is a professor of social history at University of the West Indies (UWI) and a Cambridge Commonwealth Society Fellow. In 2010, she was appointed to the United Nation Human Rights Council’s Working Group of Experts on people of African descent, to represent the Caribbean and Latin America.
Shepherd’s research interests are in Jamaican economic history during slavery, migration and diasporas, and Caribbean women’s history.
Among her publications are: Livestock, Sugar and Slavery: Contested Terrain in Colonial Jamaica; I Want to Disturb My Neighbour: Lectures on Slavery, Emancipation and Post-colonial Jamaica; Maharani’s Misery: Narratives of a Passage from India to the Caribbean; and Transients to Settlers: The Experience of Indians in Jamaica 1845-1950.
Shepherd is the editor of Working Slavery, Pricing Freedom and Slavery Without Sugar. She is co-author with professor at The UWI, Hilary Beckles of Liberties Lost: Caribbean Indigenous Societies and Slave Systems; Freedoms Won: Caribbean Emancipations, Ethnicities and Nationhood; Trading Souls: Europe’s Transatlantic Trade in Africans and Saving Souls: The Struggle to End the Transatlantic Trade in Africans.
Shepherd was the keynote speaker at the book fair’s opening ceremony on Thursday, June 4, during which she “critically addressed the festival’s theme of ‘Genocide’ in the Caribbean,” said Sekou, who also was a consultant to book fair 2020.
Computech is celebrating its 20th year in business in French St. Martin, said Reiph at the awards presentation. With its corporate headquarters in Galis Bay, Computech has long been involved in youth scholarship, literacy and community-care programmes, said managing partner and IT specialist Jean Arnell. Computech has also been a past sponsor of the St. Martin Book Fair.
Previous winners of the award include Roland Richardson, Edwidge Danticat (USA), Kamau Brathwaite (Barbados), Benny Wenda (West Papua), George Lamming (Barbados), Derek Walcott (St. Lucia), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), Nicole Cage (Martinique), and Quince Duncan (Costa Rica).
Conscious Lyrics Foundation (CLF) and the book fair committee organised the St. Martin Book Fair in collaboration with Computech and the University of St. Martin (USM), and in consultation with HNP. The Presidents Award is named after the Presidents of CLF, HNP and USM.
