Introduction
The seed that grew Peekash Press was sown when the CaribLit project, supported by Commonwealth Writers and the British Council, invited Johnny Temple of Akashic Books and Jeremy Poynting of Peepal Tree Press to attend the Kingston Book Festival in January 2013. Over a few beers, we agreed to work together to deliver commitments made at an earlier meeting held in Port of Spain in 2012, as an adjunct to the NGC Bocas Lit Fest. This was to support the growth of a regional literary infrastructure, including publishing. Both Akashic and Peepal Tree have fine lists of Caribbean fiction and poetry, but we acknowledged that writers based in the Caribbean are less likely to be published than those living in the British or North American diasporas.
Both Akashic Books and Peepal Tree Press will continue with our separate commitments to publishing the best Caribbean writing, new and classic, but we agreed to set up a joint imprint specifically dedicated to new writers within the region. With the assistance of Kellie Magnus as convener of CaribLit, a competition was run to come up with a name for the joint imprint—and amongst other good suggestions, Peekash was the one we all liked best. It sounded like something you could eat—something a little spicy, but nourishing. Many of the other names suggested were specific to individual islands, and this insularity suggests one of the barriers to the creation of a cross-Caribbean literary market. But as Olive Senior’s lovely preface on page 11 argues, it is a wholly artificial barrier, where under the surface of a delightful linguistic diversity, the unity, as Kamau Brathwaite long ago insisted, is submarine.
This is why Pepperpot, an anthology of the best stories from the 2013 Caribbean entries for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, is such a good fit. Whilst there are countries missing from the selection—we went for quality not token representation—it does have the beginnings of a cross-Caribbean mix, and we hope it will range even wider next year. The chance to look at a good number of the almost two hundred entries to the competition gave a rewarding glimpse into the current preoccupations of Caribbean writers; it confirmed the reputation of a number of already published authors, and revealed some exciting new talents. The gaps point to one of the challenges for CaribLit and Commonwealth Writers—how to support those countries whose writers don’t feature in the anthology, where the issue of size is often pertinent.
Whilst for logistical reasons this first Peekash Press publication has been handled by Akashic and Peepal Tree, it is our intention that, over time, editorial input to Peekash Press will shift to the region. As Peekash’s founders, we hope that in time the press will become autonomous, and able to choose what its relationship to us will be. How this will happen will be a topic for future discussion.
The Partners:
Commonwealth Writers is the cultural initiative of the Commonwealth Foundation. It inspires, develops, and connects writers and storytellers in a range of disciplines. It then links them to groups which seek to bring about social change.
CaribLit is a local economic development initiative committed to strengthening literary culture, publishing, and related activities in the Caribbean. It is currently supported by Commonwealth Writers in partnership with the British Council.
NGC Bocas Lit Fest, now in its fourth year, is directed by Marina Salandy-Brown, with Nicholas Laughlin as programme manager. This festival was one of the founding partners of the original Caribbean Literature Action Group. Appropriately, Pepperpot will be launched at Bocas 2014.
Akashic Books is the Brooklyn-based publishing house whose vibrant Caribbean list features writers such as Colin Channer, Marlon James, Elizabeth Nunez, Robert Antoni, and Anthony C. Winkler, among many others. The Caribbean is well represented in its location-based Noir Series (Kingston Noir, Trinidad Noir, Haiti Noir, etc.).
Peepal Tree Press is a Leeds (UK) publishing house with around three hundred Caribbean titles on its list. It is the publisher of the Caribbean Modern Classics series. Its authors Kendel Hippolyte and Rupert Roopnaraine were, respectively, the winners of the 2013 Bocas poetry and nonfiction prizes.