Greetings! Bonjou ak bonswa tout moun! We are delighted to close our spring season with another coup de cœur of Caribbean speculative fiction. This time, we’ll be hosting the Grenadian writer, poet, and novelist Merle Collins to discuss her novel The Colour of Forgetting, which was translated into French as La Couleur de l’oubli by our friends Jean-Baptiste Naudy and Grégory Pierrot of Éditions Ròt•Bò•Krik in 2023. The novel is set in the fictional island of Paz where the past, present, and future are animated by storytelling, laughter, and all the sights and sounds soti anwo rive anba. History stalks the inhabitants of Paz from the time of the Ameridians to the present, passed down through prophecies, incantations, and bawdy tales. Collins’s innovative novel is brought alive by a rich diversity of languages and registers that are spectacularly mirrored and transmitted in the French translation. We invite you to join us for our conversation with Merle Collins and we encourage you to read The Colour of Forgetting/La Couleur de l’oubli with us in whichever language moves you most.
Merle Collins 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), La Couleur de l’oubli (French edition, 2023), Angel (2011, 1997); short story collections: Rain Darling (1997), The Ladies are Upstairs (2011); poetry collections: Lady in a Boat (2003), Rotten Pomerack (1992), Because the Dawn Breaks (1987); a biography, The Governor’s Story: The Authorised Biography of Dame Hilda Bynoe (2013). 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,” a chapter in Nicole Phillips-Dowe & John Angus Martin, ed., Perspectives on the Grenada Revolution; and “Explorations of the Self,” a 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. She is Professor Emerita, University of Maryland, College Park.
April 16, 2025, at 10 a.m. EDT | 9 a.m. CDT | 7 a.m. MST/PDT
kwazman vwa 