Antiguan and Barbudan Scholars 

Dr. Claude Turner is a professor of Computer Science at Norfolk State University in Virginia. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research interests lie in the areas of cybersecurity, machine learning, financial computing, and signal processing. Dr. Turner has authored or co-authored over 40 peer reviewed publications and delivered a similar number of presentations at academic conferences. Dr. Turner has been Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator on several grant funded projects, mainly in the area of cybersecurity or socio-cybersecurity.

In 2020, Antiguan and Barbudan writer Joanne C. Hillhouse’s Burt Award winning teen/young adult novel Musical Youth (Caribbean Reads) received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews which also named it one of its top 100 indie books, and teen/YA and romance novels reviewed that year. She was previously named, in a 2018 article by award winning Guadeloupe writer Gerty Dambury on Literary Hub, as one of ‘10 Female Caribbean Authors You Should Know and Add to Your American Lit Syllabus’. She has (to 2021) authored seven books of fiction – 3 children’s picture books, With Grace (Little Bell Caribbean), Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure (Caribbean Reads), The Jungle Outside (Harper Collins); coming of age book The Boy from Willow Bend (Macmillan, Hansib), and adult contemporary books  Oh Gad! (Simon & Schuster) and Dancing Nude in the Moonlight (Macmillan, Insomniac).

With Grace was a 2017 pick for the United States Virgin Islands Governor’s Summer Read Challenge. Lost! A Caribbean Sea Adventure) has been translated in to Spanish (¡Perdida! Una Aventura En El Mar Caribe). The Boy from Willow Bend and Musical Youth are on schools reading lists in Antigua and Barbuda and other Caribbean islands. Oh Gad! was recommended on NPR.

Joanne has published in several journals and anthologies – notably Pepperpot: Best New Stories from the Caribbean (Peekash), and NAACP Image Award nominated New Daughters of Africa (Myriad). Her short story ‘Amelia at Devil’s Bridge’, originally published in Pepperpot, has been twice excerpted in Harper Collins’ Concise Revision Course – English A – a Concise Revision Course for CSEC and has been taught at colleges in Belize, the BVI, and the US. Her short story ‘The Other Daughter’, published in Commonwealth Writers’ Adda and Heady Mix’s Windrush, has been included in the national assessment in Denmark. More on Joanne’s books here https://jhohadli.wordpress.com/books and reviews here https://jhohadli.wordpress.com/reviews-and-endorsements

Joanne has served on the judging panel for the Caribbean leg of CODE-Canada-sponsored Bocas-Trinidad-administered Burt award, organized and facilitated a CODE-sponsored workshop in Antigua, and acted as a mentor for CODE Africa. She has participated in festivals in various parts of the world – including the Sharjah International Book Fair, the Medellin World Poetry Festival (virtually), the Congress of Caribbean Writers in Guadeloupe, Aye Write! in Scotland, Miami Book Fair, and, in New York, the PEN World Voices Festival (literary safari) and Brooklyn Book Festival, among others. She’s received several awards and fellowships, including the 2008 Michael and Marilee Fairbanks International Fellowship to the Breadloaf Writers Conference at Middlebury in Vermont, and fellowships to Texas A & M’s Callaloo workshop at Brown University and the University of Miami’s Caribbean Fiction Writers Summer Institute. She received a Catapult Creative Arts grant and Women of Wadadli Award for literature in 2020. In 2021, she was selected as an honoree in the first Rebel Women Lit’s Caribbean Readers Awards.

Joanne is also a recipient of the Leonard Tim Hector Memorial Award. She has twice been short listed for the Small Axe Prize for Fiction and twice long listed for the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Elizabeth Nunez Short Story prize for Caribbean resident writers. She has won two literary prizes from The Caribbean Writer literary journal – one for flash fiction and one for writers working in the Caribbean.

In 2004, she founded the Wadadli Youth Pen Prize (http://wadadlipen.wordpress.com) to nurture and showcase the literary arts in Antigua and Barbuda.

Joanne has a BA with honours in Mass Communication from the University of the West Indies and has worked in print, TV, and online journalism, in film and TV production, and in public education. She has for a number of years worked independently as a writer, editor, trainer, teacher, journalist and features writer, and content creator and consultant on a wide variety of projects. Her online portfolio is linked here https://jhohadli.wordpress.com/writing-editing-coaching-services/publications-and-projects

Additional material can be found on Joanne’s Media Page https://jhohadli.wordpress.com/about/articles-guestposts-interviews-shoutouts-xtras and social media https://jhohadli.wordpress.com/about/networked

Partial literary bibliography (not including books or stories already mentioned):

ANTHOLOGIES & JOURNALS – FICTION

2020 – ‘Carnival Hangover’ (Intersectantigua.com); 2018 – ‘The Night the World Ended’ (The Caribbean Writer);  2017 – ‘Papa Jumbie’ (Akashic); 2016 – ‘Zombie Island’ (Interviewing the Caribbean); ‘Game Changer’ (Moko: Caribbean Arts and Letters); ‘What’s in a Name’ (BIM Arts for the 21st Century); ‘Something Wicked’ (Story of the Week in The Missing Slate); 2014 – ‘Breaking with Tradition’ in Round My Christmas Tree (Caribbean Reads); 2013 – ‘The Cat has Claws’ (Akashic); ‘Carnival Blues’ (The Caribbean Writer); ‘All Fall Down’ (Womanspeak); 2012 – ‘After Glow’ in So the Nailhead Bend, So the Story End: an Anthology of Antiguan and Barbudan Writing (A Different Publisher); ‘Man of Her Dreams’ in In the Black: New African Canadian Literature’ (Insomniac), ‘Sexy Sadie’ in For Women: In Tribute to Nina Simone (Black Classic Press/MZWrightNow Productions); 2011 – ‘Teacher May’ (Poui); 2010 – ‘Country Club Kids’(The Caribbean Writer); 2004 – ‘Rhythms’ (The Caribbean Writer); ‘Martin, Dorie and Luis: A Love Story’ (Jamaica Observer Literary Arts)

ANTHOLOGIES & JOURNALS – POETRY

2021 – ‘Antigua, at night’ (BIM: Arts for the 21st Century); 2020 – ‘Grandmother and Child’, ‘Weather Patterns’, ‘Waste Not’ (Skin Deep); 2016 – ‘Under Pressure’ in A River of Stories: Volume 4 – Fire (Commonwealth Education Trust), ‘The Bamboo Raft’ & ‘Election Season’ (Interviewing the Caribbean); 2015 – ‘Ah Write!’ (PEN America Journal); ‘Election Season ll’ (The Caribbean Writer); 2014 – ‘Children Melee’ (Moko);‘Civi-li-za-tion’ (Artemis); 2013 – ‘Music’, ‘Ode to the Pan Man’, ‘On Seeing Euzhan Palcy’s Rue Cases Nègres’ (The Caribbean Writer); ‘Feather in Her Ear’, ‘Another Garden’, ‘Prison for Two’, & ‘Corporal Punishment’ (Womanspeak); ‘Summer 1’ (The Missing Slate); ‘Caribbean Woman’ (Columbia Review); 2012 – ‘Mango Season’ (The Caribbean Writer); ‘She Works’, ‘She Lives There’ (Womanspeak); ‘Development’ (Tongues of the Ocean); 2011 – ‘Ghosts Lament’ (SX Salon 5); 2010 – ‘Tongue Twista’ (The Caribbean Writer); ‘Scenes from a Caribbean Childhood’ (Anansesem); 2007 – ‘Prospero’s Education’, ‘The Arrival’, & ‘Da’s Calypso’ (Calabash); 2000 – ‘Philly Ramblings 8’ (Ma Comère)

Also various non-fiction publications including reviews in the Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books and articles and essays in Essence, Publishers Weekly, Writers Digest, Huffington Post, A letter for My Mother (Strebor), The CLR James Journal, and more. Joanne, also, has two independent series, CREATIVE SPACE and Blogger on Books.

 JOURNALS – EDITED

2014 – Tongues of the Ocean (October issue); 2007 – Carnival is All We Know, Carnival 50 anthology for the Daily Observer)

Institute for Learning Technologies

Teachers College/Columbia University

DEGREES

Ph.D., Anthropology, Columbia University, 1994, with Distinction.  Research area: West Indies. Research interests: Ethnicity, gender, race, class, and culture. Dissertation research supported by Social Science Research Council International Doctoral Fellowship and National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant.

EVALUATION

Director, Research and Evaluation, Institute for Learning Technologies, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1999–present

UNIVERSITY TEACHING

Teachers College, Columbia University, Adjunct Professor, 2003–present

Hunter College School of Education, City University of New York, Adjunct Assistant Professor, 1997–2003 

CURRENT PROJECTS IN ANTIGUA, WEST INDIES

Member, Board of Directors, Museum of Antigua and Barbuda.

Manage Prince Claus Fund grant for emergency repairs to the National Archives of Antigua and Barbuda. Awarded Spring 2019; worked completed Summer 2019.

Manage British Library Endangered Archives Digitization Grant Project for the National Archives of Antigua and Barbuda. Grant awarded Summer 2019; project due to be complete Fall 2021.

Work in progress: A Social History of Chinese Immigrants in Antigua, West Indies.

Work in progress: A Historical Study of Water in Antigua, West Indies.

WRITINGS ON THE WEST INDIES

Lowes, S. “Guilty or Innocent? A Situational Analysis of the Murder Trial of Two Chinese Immigrants to Antigua in 1883.” Paper presented at the annual conference of the Association of Caribbean Historian, June 2021.

Lowes, S. (nd). “The U.S. Bases in Antigua and the New Winthorpes Story.” Online at http://antiguahistory.net/research-on-antigua.html

Lowes, S. (2003). “Rum and Coca-Cola: The Arrival of the Americans and the Restructuring of Social Relations in Antigua in the 1940s.” Paper presented to the University of the West Indies Conference on Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Antigua and Barbuda, November 13–15, 2003. Online at: http://www.uwichill.edu.bb/bnccde/antigua/conference/papers/lowes.html

Lowes, S. (1996). West Indian-American Day Carnival. New York: Brooklyn Historical Society, 1996.

Lowes, S., Berleant-Schiller, R., and Benjamin, M. (1995). Antigua and Barbuda. Volume 182, World Bibliographical Series. Oxford, England: Clio Press.

Lowes, S. (1995). “They Couldn’t Mash Ants: The Decline of the White and Nonwhite Elites in Antigua, West Indies, 1834–1900.” In Karen Fog Olwig, ed., Small Islands, Large Issues (London: Frank Cass). Also online at http://antiguahistory.net

Lowes, S. (1995) “‘Them Planters Got Well Shook Up’: The 1918 Riots in Antigua, West Indies.” Paper presented to the Antigua and Barbuda Museum, 1995, and published online at: http://antiguahistory.net.

Lowes, S. (1994). “The Peculiar Class: The Formation, Collapse, and Reformation of the Middle Class in Antigua, West Indies, 1834–1940.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.

Lowes, S. (1978). “Social and Economic Change in St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, 1868–1968, as Seen Through Land Transfer Deeds.” Online at http://antiguahistory.net/research-on-st-maarten.html

Lowes, S. (1977). “The Friendly Island: A Report on How Tourism Development in St. Maareten, Netherlands Antilles.” Online at http://antiguahistory.net/research-on-st-maarten.html

Other papers presented at meetings of the American Historical Association and the American Anthropological Association, and book reviews contributed to Slavery and Abolition, Journal of Social History, The Americas, Ethnicity, and Nieuwe West-Indische Gids.

Adlai Murdoch is Professor of Romance Studies and Director of Africana Studies at Tufts University, with degrees from the University of the West Indies, Howard University, and Cornell University. He is the author of Creole Identity in the French Caribbean Novel (University Press of Florida, 2001), and of Creolizing the Metropole: Migratory Metropolitan Caribbean Identities in Literature and Film (Indiana University Press, 2012), the editor of The Struggle of Non-Sovereign Caribbean Territories: Neoliberalism Since the French Antillean Uprisings of 2009 (Rutgers University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of the essay collections Postcolonial Theory and Francophone Literary Studies (University Press of Florida, 2005), Francophone Cultures and Geographies of Identity (Cambridge Studies Press, 2013), and Metropolitan Mosaics and Melting-Pots—Paris and Montreal in Francophone Literatures (Cambridge Studies Press, 2013). His articles have appeared in Callaloo, Yale French Studies, Research in African Literatures, Small Axe, Francophone Postcolonial Studies, The Journal of Contemporary French Studies (Sites), L’Esprit créateur, the Journal of Romance Studies, the International Journal of Francophone Studies,American Literary History and the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. He has also co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Caribbean Literatures entitled “Migrations and Métissages,” a special double issue of the International Journal of Francophone Studies entitled “Oceanic Dialogues: From the Black Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific,” a special issue of the International Journal of Francophone Studies entitled “Oceanic Routes: Migrations and Métissages in South Pacific Literatures and Travelogues,” and a special three-volume issue of the International Journal of Francophone Studies entitled “Departmentalization at Sixty: The French DOMs and the Paradoxes of the Periphery.” Most recently, he edited a special commemorative issue of Research in African Literatures entitled “Aimé Césaire, 1913–2008: Poet, Politician, Cultural Statesman,” and co-edited a special issue of the C.L.R. James Journal with Justin Izzo, entitled, “The Postcolonial Aesthetics of René Ménil,” He is currently completing a manuscript entitled Seizing Black Diasporic Subjectivity in the French Caribbean: From the Haitian Revolution to the French Antilles in 2009, focusing on issues of revolution, diaspora, and agency in the French Caribbean and the New World.

Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo Mark is an educator and writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, US, Virgin Islands, Liberia (1976–1990), London, England (1990–1991), and in Switzerland since 1991.

Education: She earned a B.A. in English and Secondary Education from the University of the Virgin Islands and an M.A. in Modern American Literature from Kent State University, U.S.A. She also has a Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (CETEFLA).

She considers herself a citizen of the world, having lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (Adelita Concryne Middle School 1971–72); the USA (Department of Pan-African Affairs, Kent State University, TA 1972–74), Ohio; Liberia (University of Liberia 1976–1990); England (Fulham Cross Secondary Girls School January–July, 1991) and in Switzerland since 1991 (Klubschule Migros, 1992–2012 and Volkshochule beider Basel & Senioren University 2000–present).

Awards: Althea Romeo Mark was awarded the Arts and Science Poetry Prize for poems published in POEZY 21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational Noptile De Poezie De Curtea De Arges, Curtea De Arges, Romania, 2017. Awarded the Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by the Editorial Board of The Caribbean Writer in June, 2009 for publication (short story “Bitterleaf,”) in Volume 22, 2008. A short story prize for “Easter Sunday,” Stauffacher English Short Story Competition in Switzerland 1995. She received a Poetry Award for poem “Ole No-Teeth Mama,” Cuyahogo Community Writers Conference, 1974 and a Scholarship Award to the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference in Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. 1971.

International Festivals: Althea participated in the Literary Evening at the 19^th Annual St. Martin Bookfair, June 2021. She was one of thirty-five poets invited to attend the International Festival-Poetry Nights in Curtea de Arges, Romania (2017). She participated in the 10th Anniversary Conference of The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, Antigua (2015); was one of several guest poets at Kistrech International Poetry Festival in Kissi, Kenya (2014); participated in Tag der Poesie, Basel, 2013, and was one of a hundred guest poets invited to read at the XX International Poetry Festival of Medellin, Colombia (2010)

Countries in which Althea Romeo-Mark is published

She has been published in Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, The Bahamas, Barbados, Colombia, Germany, India, Kenya, Liberia, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, U.K, USA, and the US, Virgin Islands.

Poetry Collections: Althea Romeo Mark is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New, If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German), three chapbooks, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer (chapbook), Two Faces, Two Phases (chapbook) and Palaver (chapbook) and a poetry collaboration, Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit. This anthology includes poems by Althea Romeo-Mark and prose and poetry from participants in a Black Writers’ workshop conducted at Kent State University.

Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books publications that feature Althea Romeo Mark or her contributions:

Althea Romeo Mark, Poems, Antigua and Barbuda Women’s Poetry, Volume 5, Number 1, summer 2012.

Althea Romeo Mark, “Fitting Into One’s Skin,” A Review of Joanne’s Hillhouse’s Oh Gad! 2014.

Althea Romeo Mark, “An Immigrant’s Story, the Arts and Self Knowledge,” The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, Volume 9, Number 1, 2016.

Valerie Knowles-Combie on Althea Romeo Mark, “Of Settling Dust, Transition and Transformation.” The Antigua and Barbuda Review of Books, Volume 9, Number 1, 2016.

Some Recent Publications

Interview, Antigua-born Althea Romeo-Mark’s important and enduring works echo themes of “otherness,” by Jacqueline Bishop published in Bookends, The Sunday Observer, # Caribbean Strong, June 6, 2021, p.47. www.jamaicaobserver.com

Althea Romeo-Mark is one of over one hundred international poets included in Musings During a Time of Pandemic anthology, 2021. It is a Covid-19 inspired anthology, edited by Kenyan poet, Dr. Christopher Okemwa, from Kisi University. He is also the organizer of the Kisi International Poetry Festival

Althea Romeo Mark Personal Essay, “Sunrise in the Afternoon,” https://voxpopulisphere.com/2021/04/06/althea-romeo-mark-sunrise-in-the-afternoon/comment-page-1/#comment-127285

Poems, “Inside Out,” “Aunty (On Robben Island),” and “Myths That Once Crushed Our Freedom,” in the August 2020 edition of DoveTales: Online Journal of the Arts. https://writingforpeace.org/althea-romeo-mark-3/ , https://writingforpeace.org/resistance/

Spanish translation of poem “Second Impression of Grandfather,” published in Fragua de preces, published by Abra Cultural, Spain, 2020. The anthology includes one hundred and four poets selected from thirty Latin American (and the Caribbean) countries + Canary Islands. This is a Spanish 2020 edition.

Poems, “The Returned,” “Photoshoot,” “Guayaberra,” “Pockets Empty, Head full of Stories,” and the short story, “The Remnant,” published in The Caribbean Writer, vol. 34, 2020. https://www.thecaribbeanwriter.org/product/volume-34