BVI Lit Fest 2026 set to turn VI into 4-day Caribbean literary stage
Readers, writers, and cultural travellers across the Caribbean are being encouraged to participate in the BVI Lit Fest on Tortola and on Beef Island.
Hosted by H. Lavity Stoutt Community College under the theme “Mouth Open, Story Jump Out”, the festival promises more than readings and panel discussions. It will pair literature with food, music, sunset views, and island venues, creating a programme designed to feel as much like a regional gathering as a literary event.
Stories From Sunset to Sunrise
The festival begins on Thursday, November 5, 2026, with the Writers’ Welcome Reception at Allamanda Estate on Beef Island, from 6:00 to 10:00 PM.
On Friday, November 6, 2026, Sunset Stories will unfold at Brandywine Estate Restaurant in Tortola, where evening conversation and readings will be set against the island’s sunset backdrop. The following night, Saturday, November 7, 2026, Light A Fire: Poets’ Showcase brings spoken word and live poetry to Loose Mongoose on Beef Island, from 6:00 to 10:00 PM.
The weekend closes on Sunday, November 8, with the Book Brunch at 1748 Restaurant, Long Bay Beach Resort, from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM. The brunch will also announce the winners of the 2026 Writing Competition and reveal the theme for BVI Lit Fest 2027.
A Line-Up Across the Region
This year’s featured authors include Etaf Rum, Claire Adam and Ingrid Persaud, whose work spans contemporary fiction, Caribbean identity and stories of migration, family and belonging.
The poetry programme features Anthony Joseph, Safiyya Chance, Johanna Gibson and Yara Liceaga. Derron Sandy will host the Saturday poetry showcase, while Marsha Massiah will guide the Sunday Book Brunch.
Workshops for Emerging Voices
Aspiring writers will also have the chance to sharpen their craft during workshops on Saturday, November 7, 2026. Sessions will cover poetry, journalism, young adult fiction, oral tradition, visual storytelling and publishing.
Dr Richard E. Georges, President of H. Lavity Stoutt Community College, said the festival is intended to connect writers and readers throughout the region.
“We want this festival to feel like a gathering of the whole region,” he said. “Writers from across the Caribbean are coming to the British Virgin Islands to share their work, and we want readers from across the Caribbean to come and listen.”
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9 Responses to “BVI Lit Fest 2026 set to turn VI into 4-day Caribbean literary stage”
Be well, and check your typos before you post next time.
``Silly Rabbit!
The legacy of a creative artist, whatever the art form, depends on the attention given to their work after death. Since her death, Sheila has been given scant recognition. She foresaw the greed and corruption that has since manifested itself in her beloved islands. As such, she is the prophetess they do not want to be reminded of, confirming her prediction that she would soon be forgotten about.
I served as Sheila's "active force" while she was with us in this world and I consider it my task to ensure that her legacy lives on. To that end I published my book "Sheila Hyndman Remembered" and waited with bated breath to learn how it would be received. The silence was deafening! The Arts Festival organisers declined to give the book a mention. The best they could do was to stage a discussion at which, for the most part, the panellists read their own poems on the theme of one of Sheila’s poems. There was no mention that Sheila wrote her most prophetic poems while she was a student at the BVI High School. As such she remains an inspiration to today's youth.
Poem (RALPH T. ONEAL
Member Emeritus, OBE)
A Requiem, Written for This Day, For This Hour, And That Hour They Inter Him
By Tafari Zharr.
[Breathe In]
Oh, Virgin Islanders
His Days Were Numbered
Thirty-One Thousand, Three Hundred Seventy- Seven (31,377)
And You Held on To Him Thirty Days More
Monday Till Wednesday
Picture-Perfect, Statesman, Procession:
Showered with Adulation Three (3) Days
Before They’d Later [Privately] Inter Him
Jack, It’s Hard to Believe RTO Is Gone
Oh, Virgin Islanders
Oh, It’s Up to You Now
Left to Be Seen What You’ll Do
With What He Advanced
Oh, Of Freedoms Be Neither Sleep nor Still
Oh, Great Man, Groomed to Become More Than an Island
Oh, Whose Days Are No Longer, And Nights Are No More
Oh, Whose Profound Legacy—Virgin Islanders: Simply
He Did It, Get Up, Go, and Grow
Oh, Virgin Islanders
Oh, Approbations: Left by Him for You
A Great Blue Print Of Life
Oh, For His Period, Strong, Reconstruction Efforts, Sing Sweeter, Newer, Lullabies
Oh, For His Hopes of Economic Equity and Security
Be Neither Blind nor Distilled
Oh, For Our Stability and Preservation Make Homes
Not Houses, Polished, High on Hills
Oh, Virgin Islanders
Oh, For His Ambitions Traded for Yours
Oh, For Her Hopes Prorogued for Yours
Oh, For Their Futures Deferred for Yours
Oh, For His Promises Fragmented for Yours
Oh, Virgin Islanders
His Love Has Been Your Affairs
Oh, For His Aberration for Virgin Gorda
Oh, For A Romanticism with Tortola
Oh, For A Proclivity for Anegada
Oh, For His Political Life, A Sac-ri-fice?
Oh, Virgin Islanders,
Oh, But for His Earlier Excitement in The Vicinage
You Might Never
You Might Never Have
You Might Never Have Had
Your Treasured, Highly Acclaimed, and Colossal Rising Son!
[Repeat: Breathe In, hold it, Breathe Out].
Oh, Virgin Islanders
His Days Were Numbered:
Thirty-One Thousand, Three Hundred Seventy-Seven (31,377)
And You Held on To Him Thirty (30) Days More
Monday Till Wednesday
Picture-Perfect, Statesman, Procession:
Showered with Adulation Three (3) Days
Before They’d Later [Privately] Inter Him
Jack, It’s Hard to Believe RTO Is Gone
And Alongside Him Came the Turtle Dove Inviting Him Home
[Breathe Out]:
May the Honorable Ralph Tedford O’Neal, OBE, Member Emeritus, Rest in Peace,
by Tafari Zharr
If Miriam Makeba’s voice resisted
Political oppression,
Esmie’s voice resisted
Cultural erasure.
Miriam carried the struggle for
Freedom across nations.
Esmie carried the memory
Of the Virgin Islands
Through faith, wisdom, hospitality, family life,
Work ethic, community service, and everyday
Traditions.
She carried memory in her veins,
In her hands, in her kindnesses, in her eyes—
As if that were how she spoke:
Through the way she loved, through the care
she gave, through the life she made visible.
Her mothering imprint puts
Our humanity to the test.
So ask yourself:
What work remains?
And if we are tempted to forget, remember—
A voice carries weight.
One day, how we measure up to Muddy
Will become our answer.
Her kneading was never kneeling.
She carried her craft into the marketplace,
Turning labor into livelihood and everyday
work into inheritance.
Through her hands, ancestral stories
remained alive.
Through her example,
Tradition became practice—
And practice became memory.
Miriam’s song crossed borders,
Carried truth from shore to shore,
Gave courage to the silenced, and made
Freedom ask for more.
Esmie’s life carried
A different kind of courage—
The courage to preserve, to serve, to remember,
And to remain rooted.
Two women who
never met
changed Perspectives
through the lives they lived:
One sang against oppression;
One preserved what history might have
Allowed to fade.
This tribute is celebratory
Because Esmie gave us life
in more than one form
It is dignified
Because her example needs no exaggeration.
It is hopeful
Because what she carried does not end
With her.
It lives in the hands of those
Who cook, teach, serve, gather, remember,
And make a way for those coming after them.
So, Virgin Islands, do not let her kindness
Become only a memory.
Let it become a practice.
Let her wisdom shape the work that remains.
Let her values guide the way we
Care for one another.
For freedom may travel across nations,
But culture survives when a people carry it—
In their veins, in their hands,
In their kindnesses, in their eyes.
This is the crossing of two inheritances:
A song that resisted oppression
And a life that kept a people’s memory alive.
Virgin Islands, receive what Muddie gave you.
Protect it. Practice it. Pass it on.
And when the next generation asks
What remains,
Let the answer be:
We remembered, we served, we loved,
And we carried
The culture forward
(c) Tafari Zharr All rights reserved