Our gala event for campus lit week 2024 was quite wonderful. Professor Merle Collins delighted us with her talk and readings and La Shaun Prescott wowed us with her contemporary dance to a poem entitled The Door by Halcyon Alexander-Prescott
Merle Collins is Professor Emerita, University of Maryland. She is a writer of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels are Ocean Stirrings: A tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings (2023), The Colour of Forgetting (2023, 1995). Angel(2011, 1997); short story collections: Rain Darling (1997), The Ladies are Upstairs (2011); a biography, The Governor's Story: The Authorised Biography of Dame Hilda Bynoe. Her critical works include “Themes and Trends in Caribbean Writing Today” in From My Guy to Sci-Fi: Genre and Women's Writing in the Postmodern World; “To be Free is Very Sweet” in Slavery and Abolition; “Cultural Expression and the Grenada Revolution,” chapter in Nicole Phillips-Dowe & John Angus Martin, ed., Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution, and “Explorations of the Self,” chapter in Raphael Dalleo and Curdella Forbes, Caribbean Literature in Transition. Collins is also producer of a documentary, Saracca and Nation, exploring African influences on the culture of Grenada and its sister isle, Carriacou.
From 1995 to 2021, she taught Caribbean Literature and Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. She also served as Chair of the Latin American Studies Center (now the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center). Her formal academic qualifications include Ph.D., Government, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), University of London; MA, Latin American Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC; BA, General Studies (English, Spanish, History), University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, Jamaica. Other studies and certifications include Certificate in Translation (Spanish into English), Georgetown University andacourses in Latin American Culture at the Universidad Ibero-Americana, Mexico City.
La Shaun Prescott is an assistant professor of dance at the University of Trinidad and Tobago, holding an MSc in Economics from the University of The West Indies and an MFA in dance from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Her touring experience includes Europe, Canada, the USA and the Caribbean as lead dancer and choreographer with Machel Montano for 7 years, as well as 22 states in the USA with international artiste Pitbull. She has taught soca dance, Caribbean contemporary and dance fitness workshops in South Africa, Australia, France, London, New York, Atlanta, Miami, Guadeloupe and Martinique.