AATEIM Official Launch
The Alumni Association of the Tertiary Educational Institutions on the Morne (AATEIM) is bringing together everyone who graduated from the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC), its predecessor and successor institutions, as well as past faculty and staff from these institutions. The association was set up by a group of graduates from a few of these colleges who recognized the critical role that high-quality tertiary education can play in personal and national development. This is an opportunity for members of the association to give of their time, expertise, and resources to benefit the students and staff of SALCC. On 13th February 2022, the Official Launch of AATEIM will take place, featuring some of our best creative alumni.
Keynote Speaker
Vladimir Lucien SALCC Alumnus -Writer-Critic-Actor-Winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
Vladimir Lucien is a writer, actor and critic from St. Lucia. His writing has been published in The Caribbean Review of Books, Wasafiri, Small Axe journal, the PN Review, BIM magazine, Caribbean Beat, the Washington Square Review, Poetry International, VOGUE and other journals. He was awarded the first prize in the poetry category of the Small Axe prize 2013 and is the winner of the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for his debut collection Sounding Ground, published by Peepal Tree Press in May, 2014, the youngest to ever win the prize.
Renowned poet, historian and cultural critic, Kamau Brathwaite proclaimed Sounding Ground “…the sign of the at last starat of a new tradition (in the anglopho Caribb)..” While eminent poet and literary critic Mervyn Morris hailed Lucien as “a fertile maker of metaphors.”
Several of Lucien’s poems have been translated into Dutch, Italian, French and Mandarin. He is co-editor of the anthology, Sent Lisi: Poems and Art of St. Lucia which was published in November 2014 and the screenwriter of the documentary The Merikins which premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival in 2013. Lucien has been featured at several international literary festivals such as the Jaipur Literature Festival, the Read My World Festival in Amsterdam, Calabash International Literary Festival and Miami Book Fair. He has also served as Writer-In-Residence at the University of the West Indies, Mona. Currently based in New York City where he is a PhD candidate at New York University, Lucien remains one of the most important voices in Caribbean letters today.