Writing for Our Lives

Funso Aiyejina, a key member of The Cropper Foundation family and lead editor for the upcoming 2024 climate justice anthology ‘Writing for Our Lives,’ passed on July 1, 2024. The anthology will now be published in his memory, and in recognition of his selfless commitment to The Foundation’s work across the region’s literary landscape.

Funso was one of the most steadfast compatriots of The Cropper Foundation, from before there was even a Foundation. When approached by John and Angela Cropper, grieving parents looking for a way to give back to the Caribbean in memory of their son, he co-conceptualised and led the Cropper Foundation Residential Workshop for Caribbean Writers for over 20 years, with Merle Hodge, until their retirement as co-facilitators in 2021. Over the more than two decades of his co-leadership of the Workshop, he led and mentored over 180 Caribbean writers, many of whom have gone on to leave their own marks on the regional and global literary landscape.

We remember him fondly for his sharp wit, fierce logic and generous spirit. He was unstinting in his honesty as he was in his praise. An enthusiastic supporter of many and mentor to many more, he showed up relentlessly, never complaining, but always with a chuckle and a smile.

On behalf of our Board of Trustees and the entire TCF team, we offer deepest condolences to the Aiyejina family at this incredibly difficult time. Along with you, we join the countless friends, colleagues, peers, students, writers and readers in T&T, across the region and still further across the Atlantic, in his country of birth Nigeria, in mourning the loss of our beloved Funso.

In the wake of his passing, there has been a change to the anthology’s editorial team. We are pleased to welcome Diana McCaulay, environmental activist and award-winning author as Co-Editor, who will work alongside Shivanee Ramlochan, Co-Editor of Writing for Our Lives.

Shivanee Ramlochan is a Trinidadian poet, essayist, and critic. Her collection of poems, Everyone Knows I am a Haunting (Peepal Tree Press) was shortlisted for the 2018 Felix Dennis Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her second poetry collection, Witch Hindu, and her debut creative non-fiction book of essays, Unkillable, which focuses on Indo-Caribbean women’s disobedience, are both in development.  

Shivanee has served as Book Reviews Editor of Caribbean Beat Magazine since 2012. She has worked for the Bocas Lit Fest, the Caribbean’s largest Anglophone literary festival, since its inception, and currently serves as Festival and Programme Manager. Shivanee is Social Media and Events Manager for Paper Based Bookshop, Trinidad and Tobago’s sole Caribbean specialty bookseller. She was Chief Guest Editor for Susumba’s Book Bag Issue 10: Natural Disasters in Our Caribbean / Queer & LGBT Caribbean Lit, and has served on adjudication and editorial panels for Commonwealth Writers’ adda; Honeysuckle Press; The Forward Prizes; The Caribbean Review of Books, Discover T&T, and others. Currently, she serves as Translation Selector for the Poetry Book Society.  

She is the Co-Editor, alongside Lucy Evans, of the forthcoming Peekash Press anthology, Unstitching Silence: Fiction and Poetry by Caribbean Writers on Gender-Based Violence (2024).  Shivanee is also a fellow of the Cropper Foundation Residential Writers’ Workshop in 2010.

Editorial Statement

It is devastating to do this work in the wake of Funso Aiyejina’s death, but that does not mean we’re working on Writing For Our Lives without him. His legacy, in The Cropper Foundation as in so many other walks of his creative and professional life, remains unkillable. It moves me, deeply and beyond easy speech, to now be co-editing this anthology of climate justice alongside Diana McCaulay, one of our region’s brightest, most indefatigable environmental activists and writers. Funso, too, approved of Diana’s work, and the ways in which she did it — this, to me, is the ultimate seal of approval. I remain hopeful and committed to the vision of this book, and radically thankful to all the writers who will become a part of it. We’ve never needed it more.

Website: https://shivaneeramlochan.com/

Facebook: @shivanee.ramlochan

X (Twitter): @novelniche

Instagram: @novelniche

Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican environmental activist and writer, a lifelong resident of the capital city of Kingston. She has written five novels – Dog-Heart, Huracan (Peepal Tree Press), Gone to Drift (Papillote Press and HarperCollins), White Liver Gal (self-published) and Daylight Come (Peepal Tree Press). She has won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region twice, in 2012 and 2022.

Diana was awarded the Norman Washington Manley Award in 2021 for Excellence for Protection and Preservation of the Environment and in 2022, a Gold Musgrave Medal for distinguished eminence in the field of literature by the Council of the Institute of Jamaica.

Her forthcoming novel, A House for Miss Pauline, will be published by Dialogue Books in the UK and Algonquin Books in the USA in early 2025.

Editorial Statement

I am honoured to be asked to co-edit this vital anthology Writing For Our Lives, especially as the Caribbean has just experienced the devastating impacts of Hurricane Beryl. We are indeed writing for our lives, our islands, our livelihoods and our futures and I hope the stories in this collection will influence the governments of the world to finally act on the climate crisis with the urgency it requires.

Website: http://dianamccaulay.com/

Facebook: @dianamccaulayauthor

X (Twitter): @dmccaulay

Instagram: @dianamccaulay