Announcing the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship!

May 6, 2026Leave a comment

Fresh Milk is deeply pleased to share the results of our inaugural Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship, which has been made possible with the generous support of Peter Lewis as part of our 2026 Slow Reading Programme. This programme serves to activate Fresh Milk’s Colleen Lewis Reading Room (CLRR), and commemorate Colleen Lewis’s legacy on the 20th anniversary of her passing.

We are delighted to announce that the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship has been awarded to Cyndi Celeste and Connor Harris! Congratulations!

Read the full jury report process below

The Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship was designed with three principal desires in mind:

i) A programme designed by and for artists, writers, and cultural workers with the goal of drawing strength from, and consolidating an awareness across linguistic regions and generations.

ii) A programme that exalts the civic function of the arts and art research by bridging cultural practices with the social contexts to which they are responding, as well as addressing the practical needs of doing this work.

iii) A programme that activates and facilitates exchange of existing work, thought, and feeling between Barbadians and, more broadly, Caribbean people, in order to digest and counteract the prevailing sense of isolation and/or apathy our economic and social condition can perpetuate.

The Bocas Lit Fest — held annually in Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago — represents the most significant literary event in the Anglo-Caribbean. Held this year from April 30th to May 3rd, it generates a period of crucial enrichment, exchange and celebration for our region’s cultural sector. We determined sponsored attendance of this festival for a Bajan writer to be a necessary element of the Slow Reading Programme, in order to take part in the world-building activities and tools that literature, arts and archiving generate, helping to foster the imagination required to navigate the nuances of the Caribbean.

The Award Details

The Bocas Lit Fest scholarship includes:

Round-trip airfare to Trinidad and Tobago.
4 nights of accommodation at the Kapok Hotel.
Airport transfers.
A daily allowance for the 4-day duration of the festival.

Candidate Requirements:

Candidates must be 21 years of age or older and based in Barbados.
Candidates must hold a passport valid for at least 6 months for travel to Trinidad and Tobago.
Candidates must be available to travel for the full duration of the festival (April 30th – May 3rd).
Upon completion, Candidates agree to collaborate with Fresh Milk to craft a journalistic reflection/report on the experience to be shared across our public platforms.

Procedure

On March 12th, Fresh Milk contacted three esteemed members of the local literary community:

Dr. Debra Providence, Lecturer at The Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Literatures.
Robert Sandiford, co-founder of ArtsEtc publishing company, writer, editor and part time faculty at the Barbados Community College Division of Fine Arts Department.
Andy Taitt, owner of Black Rock Books book store and community hub for literary events.

Providing the above mentioned background, we requested they collaborate as nominators, selecting 2 candidates each by the deadline of March 23rd.

The nominators selected the following individuals as nominees:

Cyndi Celeste
Claudia Clarke
Christopher Cox
Kemar Doughty
Connor Harris
Shondrell Meredith

On March 25th the nominees were contacted to be notified of their candidacy, and were requested to submit a 500-750 word Letter of Motivation by April 3rd, articulating the following:

Why they are a suitable candidate for this scholarship.
Describing the main themes or areas of interest in their literary craft, and if there are emerging themes in particular that they would like to further explore through attending Bocas LitFest.
How attending Bocas LitFest will impact their professional development and area of interest.

All 6 Letters of Motivation were shared with and reviewed by the Fresh Milk team and Fresh Milk’s Board Members:

Natalie McGuire, Curator of Social History and Engagement at the Barbados Museum & Historical Society
Rae Skinner, Founder of Caribbean Brushstrokes Gallery

The decision making process was made through each board member representing one vote, and the Fresh Milk team representing a third vote.

General Comments

Each candidate’s Letter of Motivation reflected exciting and compelling insight into their practice, their desires and some background to their work.

Cyndi Celeste wrote of her keen dedication to exploring the themes of nation language, futurism, and “acts of re-membering as personal and collective repair”, with a special focus on the Caribbean Voice and orality. Their years spent organising events and opportunities for the broader literary and academic community, as well as for the general public, is reflected in their attention to innovating methodologies, and the social role that the literary arts must uphold.

Claudia Clarke described her commitment to writing women-centric fiction, to assert the presence of nuanced mid-life experiences in contemporary Barbados, and bringing to life the multiple layers of an invisibilised demographic. She remarks on how the “All Together Now” theme of Bocas Lit Fest this year resonates strongly with the predominantly solitary nature of literary craft which, as an emerging middle-aged writer herself, is of particular importance to engage with opportunities for community and knowledge exchange.

Christopher Cox shared his craft as dedicated to interrogations of the ills and virtues of the human psyche primarily through humorous story telling and plots of intrigue and conspiracy. He seeks to use these as vehicles to blend Caribbean History with new ways of storytelling, re-imagining past elements in exciting new settings like science fiction and modern fantasy.

Kemar Doughty spoke of his keen interest in addressing Caribbean masculine identities and the intersection of religion and sexuality in the region, as well as his curiosity at the intersection of linguistics and literary criticism. Importantly, he touches on his position as an academic and creative from an urban working class Bajan background, working within an under-narrated area to which he dedicates his voice and talents.

Connor Harris described her deep interest in working through themes of magical realism, and her particular focus on the Caribbean gap within the global canon of encyclopedias of symbolism related to regional mythologies and folklore. She reflected a well-studied understanding of her craft and its relevance within our current context, dedicated to spiritual and religious themes pertinent to cultural rites of self-actualisation, touching on memory, death/rebirth and the shadow.

Shondrell Meredith illustrated her journey from beginning as an avid reader using novels as a means to travel the world, and becoming acquainted with life in other Caribbean islands through fiction, to growing into a creator of her own stories that portray a fresh perspective of Barbadian life. She identified her motivation to bridge cultural gaps and portray our similarities in an engaging way, commenting on the value that attending Bocas Lit Fest would have for her to deepen not only her experience as an emerging writer, but also to gain a better understanding of the world of publishing and marketing.

Results

It was a difficult process evaluating the candidates, as each writer presented compelling niches and interests that would undoubtedly benefit from the opportunity to attend Bocas Lit Fest. On the one hand this positively indicates that the literary talent in Barbados is growing ambitiously, and is responding creatively to the needs of our local context. However, it signals that the cultural infrastructure and opportunities to accommodate these ambitions needs to develop and expand in tandem, in order to adequately meet the needs and desires expressed by writers from different backgrounds and practicing diverse genres.

We designed this scholarship with the initial intention of offering it to one candidate; however, upon evaluation of the top candidates we noticed that their profiles were very much complimentary and would benefit from close interaction. We therefore decided to adjust our Slow Reading Programme budgeting in order to grant the scholarship to two awardees.

We are delighted to announce that the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest Scholarship has been awarded to Cyndi Celeste and Connor Harris.

A huge thank you to Peter Lewis for making this scholarship possible, and to the nominators for their role in stewarding our local literary ecosystem.

We strongly encourage you to follow and support the trajectory of all the candidates, each with unique merits:

Claudia Clarke
Website: https://www.claudiaclarkewriter.com
Instagram: @claudiaclarkewriter

Shondrell Meredith
“These Fields and Hills” (2023) on Amazon
Instagram: @pennedbyshondrell

Kemar Doughty
Inkitt: https://www.inkitt.com/kemjlu

Christopher Cox
Instagram: @hypothetical.arts

Cyndi Celeste
Website: https://cyndiceleste.com/home
Instagram: @cyndi.celeste

The CLRR Slow Reading Programme #1

October 16, 2025Leave a comment

Fresh Milk is excited to share with you our first activation to inaugurate our Slow Reading Programme, an initiative dedicated to “building intimacy with our books while shaping a community of readers locally and across our archipelago.”

In memory of writer and art historian Colleen Lewis — whose collection of publications dedicated to Caribbean literature, history and contemporary art form the foundation of the Fresh Milk reading room — this programme invites you to form a bridge that cuts through the noise of our current media landscape in order to engage deeply with the Caribbean literary landscape.

Programme #1 – Reflecting on the Lucayan Archipelago Residency

From September to November of 2024, Poinciana Paper Press became home to the first participants of the Lucayan Archipelago Residency in The Bahamas, with the support of the Panta Rhea Foundation.

Barbadian writer Ark Ramsay joined forces with book artist Joko Viruet Feliciano from Puerto Rico to create a collaborative work that develops a critical cultural dialogue with the Bahamian ecosystems and resources.

“Un Santo a la Vez/A Prayer in Motion” is the result of this inter-island encounter, materialised in a carefully hand-bound book conceptualised and crafted by Joko which houses Ark’s written reflections, and masterfully put together under the guidance of Sonia Farmer, founder of PPP.

To bring the nuances and depth of this work into view, Fresh Milk invited established Trinidadian poet, arts reporter and book blogger Shivanee Ramlochan to connect with Ark in an organically meandering conversation of like-hearted souls. We have the privilege of sharing the recording of this exchange with a public audience, inviting you to join in the thoughtful contemplation of the pressing issues that our region collectively confronts.

Joko joins in the reflective process asynchronously, sharing audio recordings and images that guide us through the residency experience from her perspective.

See the full programme here

Kia Redman’s Fresh Milk Residency – Week 4 Blog Post

July 11, 2019July 12, 2019Leave a comment

Barbadian artist and aspiring writer Kia Redman shares her final blog post about her Colleen Lewis Research/Writing Residency at Fresh Milk. The last week was somewhat stressful as she prepared for her first public reading at the event FRESH MILK XXII, while also offering moments of relief through outings and interactions with her fellow residents, the Fresh Milk Team and the wider creative community. Spilling over into a 5th, unplanned week has been just the thing for Kia to comedown from the intensity of her performance, continue her research, and even embark on a new visual work to complement her written/spoken word piece. Read more below:

This last week was stressful. I spent the entire time completely dreading Friday night, when we would have to read what we wrote in front of people. It wasn’t the public speaking that bothered me. That is a necessary evil in life. I just had no idea what I would write. I tried for days, and I ran myself around in circles. Ideas would fly out of my brain, imprint themselves on a page and just as soon disappear when I scrapped them. I was embodying a clichéd rendering of writer’s block.

Eventually, I settled on a concept. I was spending a lot of time researching ‘How to Escape from Paradise’ and I knew I wanted to write something from the perspective of the island. When I thought of all the possible instances from history I could reference, there were so many players and so much turbulence and trauma surrounding them that it seemed like the island was having a series of terrible relationships. Initially, I was only going to have the island reminiscing about her past paramours, but the voices of her current lovers kept invading my mind. This is how “A Paradise Escape?” was born. I read the part of the citizen, and with the help of Ethan reading the tourist and my mother, Donna, reading the Island, we performed the piece.

A Trio of Models

Kia Redman, Ethan Knowles and Donna Redman performing at FRESH MILK XXII

While most of the week had me in a panic, the beginning was amazing. We had a town-adventure day and visited Israel Mapp at the incredible Union Collaborative space and Kraig Yearwood in the midst of setting up his installation “Retro-Future Landscapes” in Norman Centre. It is inspiring every time I witness contemporary art purposefully intertwined with everyday public life. Our adventure day was no letdown. Creativity ran rampant, in tune with the frenzied pulse of the city. The perfect day ended in much the same fashion. We sat upstairs Norman Centre, looking down at the city as we ate some delicious vegan food, family style.

Green Lime Cafe vegan lunch

Ark Ramsay, Katherine Kennedy, Kia Redman and Ethan Knowles

I couldn’t have asked for a better final week. While it did incite a massive amount of stress, it also helped me get over the mental creative block I have had for a while. There’s nothing like the threat of public embarrassment to light a fire under your ass. I’m still humming from the thrill of that experience. So much so that I’ve now found myself back at Fresh Milk for another week, keeping Ark company as they finish up their final week.

My work for this time isn’t going to be strictly literary. I loved the way the performative-like presentation of “A Paradise Escape?” left room for me to incorporate this and other future literary works into my visual practice. This is what I’ll be experimenting with in my bonus week at Fresh Milk and back in my space in the time to come. But it hasn’t all been work. The stress of the last week really made me crave curling up with a good book. Earlier in the residency, Annalee had placed a copy of Jean Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea” on my desk, telling me it was one of Colleen’s favourite books. It’s certainly been on my ‘to read’ list for a while and seemed like the perfect way to end off my time as the inaugural Colleen Lewis Research/Writing Resident. The addition of the beautiful, sweetheart Roo made it impossibly better.

Puppy-sitting Roo for a day

I didn’t know how much I needed this residency until it came. The peaceful surroundings were a great escape from the bustle of my everyday life in the city, but it was the camaraderie that made it a truly unforgettable experience. Spending time connecting with Ethan, Ark, Katherine and Annalee has been healing in a way that’s as vital as it was unexpected. While I have been in the company of people who have encouraged my writing before, I have never been in a space so devoted to celebrating literature. It made me distinctly aware of how much I rely on the visual to translate my experiences, and how out of my comfort zone I was. It was great to be pushed. I’ve felt my perspectives broadening each day in the last few weeks. It almost feels like I have developed a new way of seeing…of being. I’m excited to explore this new addition to myself and see where it takes me. I’m sure it’ll be somewhere I could never imagine.

Thank you to all who made this journey possible. You are appreciated in ways I can’t express.

Kia Redman’s Fresh Milk Residency – Week 2 Blog Post

June 26, 2019June 26, 2019Leave a comment

Barbadian artist and aspiring writer Kia Redman shares a blog post on her second week in residence at Fresh Milk. Deviating from carefully laid plans, this week saw a whirlwind of activity for Kia through studio visits, openings, workshops and bonding sessions with her fellow residents. She has been going with the flow and taking in the action, hoping to return to research, writing and production moving forward, with these experiences to reflect on. Read more below:

Peregrination by Ewan Atkinson. Photo by Katherine Kennedy

Colonization in Reverse – Panel in the Enigma of Arrival -The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain Exhibit

Ah know rum an woman – Panel in the Enigma of Arrival -The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain Exhibit

My favourite part about making plans has always been witnessing the innumerable ways life will set them off course. The futility of it all and the sense of powerlessness it instigates is nothing compared to the exhilarating sense of serendipity that just overwhelms every derailed plan. This is the state in which my week progressed.

I ended the first week with a clear vision in mind for the goals I was planning to achieve during my second week at the Colleen Lewis Research/Writing residency. I had planned to get a start on writing and tackle some of the topics I had narrowed down. Life had other plans for me. Monday morning I pitched my idea for my community outreach, and the rest of the week went by in a blur of activity, excitability and camaraderie: One moment you could find us chilling on the studio floor with Ewan, as he shared his work with us. The next I was beating everyone at Ewan’s “unwinnable” game Peregrination. There was the invention of our “fish cake crawl” and its strict judging criteria. Our visit to the opening of The Enigma of Arrival -The Politics and Poetics of Caribbean Migration to Britain at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society and our hyped up selfie session. It was a dynamic week.

Criteria

Bubbas fish cakes

Bite

Group selfie

When I wasn’t off learning and bonding, I planned and prepared for my workshop I called ‘The Time Capsule Project’. Geared toward the class 4 students who will soon be leaving Workman’s Primary School, I thought it would be both a fun and important exercise to create a digital time capsule with them. We are all shaped by our histories. Our past memories, decisions, interactions and tales are the building blocks that form our foundations and influence our personalities, and inform our futures. History is something to be respected, cherished and most importantly, documented. Who better to chronicle the stories of a time than those living in it?

Workmans Primary School Workshop – Photo by Ethan Knowles

Friday morning I arrived at Workman’s Primary with Ark and Ethan, who had agreed to help me out. We were escorted to a classroom and I greeted the kids the only courteous way you should approach children forced to sit in a classroom all day: with snacks – more specifically Shirley Biscuits. I played them my stop motion animation,“HOME”, in which the little house from a Shirley biscuit traverses obstacles in an effort to find its way home. It was an example to show them how I chose to record my personal history. What followed was a brief chat on the importance of documenting their personal histories and memories, during which they shared with me the best memories they have from their time at Primary School. Using the cameras donated by a past Fresh Milk resident, I set them free and they spent the next couple hours playing, exploring and capturing whatever they deemed most important.

I won’t say what I foresee for this upcoming week. Regardless of what happens, I’m sure it will be an enjoyable one. I do hope that I will get more reading and writing in though…I really miss my hammock time.

Workmans Primary School Workshop – Photo by Ethan Knowles

Kia Redman’s Fresh Milk Residency – Week 1 Blog Post

June 17, 2019Leave a comment

Barbadian artist Kia Redman shares her first blog post about her Fresh Milk residency, reflecting as the 2019 recipient of the Colleen Lewis Research/Writing residency programme. Writing has always been something Kia wanted to explore more within her growing creative practice, and she is taking this time to immerse herself within the material the reading room has to offer, with a particular focus on ideas of ‘paradise’ and ‘escapism’ in a Caribbean context. Read more below:

Writing is not something I have ever done for myself. There has always been an assignment, an application or a job providing the catalyst for me to flip the switch in my mind from visual to literary. As such, I have never presumed myself worthy of the title of writer, despite how much I enjoy the process. A title can often grow to become part of your identity. I could not, in good conscience, claim one that I had not had the courage to actively pursue…until now.

While I am not yet ready to claim the title, perhaps I will gain new perspectives by the end of this residency. For now, I will just embrace the joy of being able to write for myself.

My first week as the first Colleen Lewis Research/Writing Resident at Fresh Milk was liberating. There is a peculiar kind of freedom that comes with having a vast expanse of knowledge at your fingertips and a vast amount of time with which you can peruse it all. It is somewhat akin to living while time stands still. The construct of days and hours lose all meaning. The change in time now only marked by the end of a chapter, the occasional pang of hunger, and the draw of my bed as the light shifts gradually darker in the sky. Throughout that time only one thought occupied my mind: How to Escape from Paradise.

The irony of the topic of my research was never lost on me the many times I laid in the hammock strung up just outside the studio, basking in the breeze and lush foliage, with one of the many books I felt compelled to read nestled in my hands. It has been a near constant topic on my mind since the final year of my studio art degree, two years ago, when I wrote on it as part of an assignment for Ewan Atkinson’s Contemporary Issues class. It almost seems like it was an inevitability that I would confront it again after he suggested that I would be interested in applying to this residency.

Initially, I was a bit apprehensive when approaching the topic. It had been ruminating around in my head for two years and I was nowhere closer to being able to translate my jumble of thoughts into something tangible. Moreover, I had somehow convinced myself that the topic was limited and there were not many avenues down which I could pursue my ideas. I was proven wrong within the first few moments of stepping foot in the studio. Before I even fully unpacked, Annalee graciously provided me with many starting points and perspectives that gradually turned into large stacks of books on my desk as the week progressed. While the jumble of information in my head did increase, the breadth of my understanding deepened and the constraints I had unwittingly placed on the topic, fell away to make room for new pathways I will enjoy exploring in the coming weeks.

One of my goals for this first week was to delve into the Colleen Lewis Reading Room Collection and engage with books that caught even an ounce my interest. I wanted to start with an open mind. My next goal was to explore the vibrant surroundings I found myself in and feed off of the tropical energy I’m attempting to translate into words. My final goal was to develop a structure for what I plan on writing throughout the residency.

The first goal was met within moments of the start, while the last two came to be on the last day of the first week: Annalee had just suggested I read a piece by Colleen Lewis, the namesake of the residency and very reason I found myself sitting amongst her treasured books. She rummaged around the shelves until she found “Pictoral Depictions of the West Indian Landscape in the 18th Century and Early 19th Century: The Sublime, The Picturesque, The Romantic” in the fiftieth volume of the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society and placed it in my hands. Within moments, her vivid descriptions of the history and form of the earliest means of paradise marketing in the Caribbean had me yearning to consume the words surrounded by all that she spoke of. I immediately grabbed the journal and said my brief farewells to Annalee and Ethan as I strode out of the studio with a fierce purpose. Seconds later I was back to grab my pen and notebook. It had taken me a moment to realize that the intense familiar calling I felt was inspiration. A couple hours and a few heated conversations with some cows later, I was back in the studio. I felt accomplished. I had not only come up with a structure for what I plan to write, but the walk and Colleen’s words in the journal had helped to solidify two years-worth of jumbled thoughts in my mind. I could finally start to see the form my visual work, under the same topic, will take.

The next following weeks will find me exploring:

The link between Paradise and Escape
The methods and motivations behind the creation of the Caribbean as a Paradise
The realities that have paralleled the Paradise throughout the centuries
Paradise as an exotic escapist destination
The physical aspects of Paradise as a tool for escape and concealment, as seen with the Maroon societies, runaway slaves and escaped prisoners in more modern times.
Paradise as a prison, for indentured laborers and slaves
Paradise as a banal reality for those who live within its lush bounds and the means by which they indulge in their escapist fantasies.

It was a great first week. I can’t wait to begin the next!