Great Regulars: Its founders and directors,

poet Kwame Dawes and novelist Colin Channer (both raised in Jamaica, but now professors of creative writing at USC and Wellesley College, respectively), made a brief double act speech on Thursday night. "We wanted to make Wole feel at home," joked Channer of the festival's biggest star [Wole Soyinka], "so we created an insurrection of our own." In full seriousness though, almost without exception writers had decided, on balance, to come. As Dawes pointed out, whenever anyone had asked of them if they should really be making this trip, the response has been, "We need Calabash, even more now, not less." As Channer puts it, in its 10 years, for Jamaicans, the festival has become a loud and eloquent expression of "what is best about us."

from Olivia Cole: The Spectator: Jamaica's Big Book Party

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