Because it is nice to launch the festival in Kingston, it's nicer to announce it where it happens: here a foretaste, thanks to Susumba!

Copy Paste from
http://www.susumba.com/books/news/calabash-2014-unleashes-globalishus-line

The Calabash Literary festival has announced a juggernaut of a line-up for the 2014 installation of the festival, which will be staged under the theme Globalishus. The festival organizers have snagged a list of writers who can certainly do justice to the word which invokes ideas of the global, the greedy (from the Jamaican word gravalicious) and even the delicious.

Now changed to a biennial event in this its 11th staging, the 2014 event will take over the black sands by Jakes in Treasure Beach from Friday, May 30 to Sunday, June 1, providing three days of literature by the sea.

With a roster of readers which includes Kenya’s iconic novelist, essayist and playwright Ngugi Wa Thiong’o (A Grain of Wheat, Petals of Blood, Decolonizing the Mind and In The House of the Interpreter), novelist and essayist Salman Rushdie (The Satanic Verses, Midnight's Children), Zadie Smith (White Teeth, Autobiography Man, On Beauty), Jamaica Kincaid (A Small Place, Lucy, Annie John), and Paul Mundoon (Moy Sand and Gravel, The Annals of Chile) Calabash 2014 is certainly set to be all the things, connoted by Globalishus.

The 2014 event will also include a hearty serving of regional writers. Friday night’s event opens with three Jamaicans Beverly East (Reaper of Souls, Batmitzvah Girl), A-dZiko Simba Gegele (All Over Again) and Roland Watson-Grant (Sketcher). Saturday morning brings a return of the ‘yardies’ this time via poetry with Millicent Graham (The Damp in Things, The Way Home), Ann Margaret Lim (The Festival of Wild Orchid) and Velma Pollard (Shame Trees Don't Grow Here, The Best Philosophers I Know Can't Read).

The festival will also feature Andrea Stuart and Karen Lorde two writers hailing from Barbados as well as Trinidad’s Robert Antoni. Stuart, who currently resides in the UK, is a biographer and the author of the highly acclaimed Sugar in the Blood. Lord is a two-time winner of the Frank Collymore Literary Award for her novels Redemption in Indigo and The Best of All Possible Worlds. Antoni is the author of As Flies to Whatless Boys and the Commonwealth Award winning novel Divina Trace.

(More on http://www.susumba.com/books/news/calabash-2014-unleashes-globalishus-line )

Sounds fantastic!! I am getting sooooo excited already!

Is there going to be a artist singer there?

The official Calabash Schedule will have everyone on their toes getting to all the reading/interview events followed by sumptuous post-midnight bashments.

www.calabashfestival.org/2014/schedule.html

As far as buying books from the on-site bookstore. Will it be Bookophilia out of Kingston which will be affiliated with the Festival? (http://blogs.bookophilia.com/about-us)
How do folks feel about purchasing books by Festival participants prior to arriving in Treasure Beach? The reasoning is that if Bookophilia is the local Jamrock book vendor, which at its home base in Kingston provides a hospitable atmosphere to actually peruse books over a cup of coffee before purchasing (or naught), does that justify generous patronage? Icing on the cake would be if Bookophilia gave a certain percentage of their profits for the support of current & future Calabash Fests!

Therefore, if all the above rings true, curiously Calabash's official Publication promotions offers/celebrates a route to order favoured books directly from Amazon & Peepal Press...which, assumingly, is how a great many of us simply "click" to order our literature fix these days. (www.calabashfestival.org/2014/publications.html)

Writers of Witness & Provocation Slated For the Calabash Fest...where Fatwas Are Not Enforced:

Salman Rushdie––Satanic Verses (ooh la la!)
www.jamaicaobserver.com/pfversion/The-satanic-verses_16378215