 Hello and welcome to Celebrating Excellence. This series of programs aims to showcase the contributions of St Lucia's two Nobel laureates, Sir William Arthur Lewis, who received the Nobel Prize for Development Economics in 1979 and Sir Derek Alton Walcott for Literature in 1992. 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of the initiative first instituted in 1993 to honour and celebrate the life and work of St Lucia's Nobel laureates. So in 2023 the theme for the festival is Celebrating Excellence, nurturing our creativity, consolidating our legacy. Our guest, Dr Anderson Reynolds, was born and raised in Viewfort St Lucia. Dr Reynolds founded Jaco Productions, a cultural and entertainment enterprise that seeks to encourage the artistic expression of St Lucia culture and to promote that culture worldwide. We asked Dr Reynolds for his reflections on the contribution of Sir Derek Walcott and that of other contemporary St Lucia writers to the literary arts, both at home and on the international stage. Well in terms of the influence of St Lucia writers including Derek Walcott on Caribbean and world literature, the starting point has to be with the 1950s to 1970s St Lucia arts skill that led the way in West Indian theatre and spectro-cultural renaissance. Out of the arts skill emerged Gap Centome, the cousin of Dunstan Centome, who gained international acclaim as a novelist. This actually was St Lucia's first novelist and he went on to earn a PhD in literature at Princeton University. Of course there is Derek Walcott who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, the very pinnacle of the literary world. This first generation of St Lucia writers and artists influenced the second generation of writers, the second generation of prominent St Lucia writers including Kendall Hippolyt, John Robert Lee, Mark Donald Dixon, Adrian Ogie, Jane King and Modest Downes. This second generation and now we have a third generation of St Lucia writers with Vladimir Lucien and Lou Brain leading the way, they are like the rising stars of St Lucia and Caribbean literature. Both Kanisa Lou Brain and Vladimir Lucien has won the overall prize, Boca's Prize, which is the highest literary prize in the English Caribbean. Derek Walcott is the only other St Lucia that has won this prize. What this says is in effect saying that we are not just about Bacchanal, Ram, Beach and Sunshine and Touristic Smiles, we are creating some very serious and important literature that rivals what obtains anywhere else in the world. These writers by virtue of their work are very much involved in nation building, in forging our national identity and in establishing that our way of life, our culture is as much deserving of artistic expression as that of any other country. In terms of Derek Walcott, Derek Walcott has been a big revelation in my life. When I first read Walcott, I thought this writer is expressing the way I feel and the way I view my country. In other words Walcott was essentially giving voice to my voice. In Walcott I found many gems. For example it was there I first found out that Shabin means Red Nigger and it was there I first encountered the Shebonnes, the women called Carriers. In just one line of one of Derek Walcott poems, I was able to visualize the Shebonnes in action, so much so that when I was writing my first book, the novel, Death by Fire, that one line from that poem allowed me to write a whole passage, a whole description of the Shebonnes in action. Later when I was writing my second book, The Struggle for Survival, I found a National Geographic magazine photo of the Shebonnes in operation and the photo matched almost exactly my Derek Walcott inspired description of the Shebonnes. My favorite writer is Toni Morrison, African American novelist who won the Nobel Prize in 1993, the year after Walcott won his Nobel Prize. In fact Toni Morrison was probably one of the best things that happened to me in my adult life. Why? Because she writes the way I think. Besides that Toni Morrison takes an entity, a person, a community, strips it to its bare essential and colors magnifies that those bare essentials to illuminate the very essence of that entity. In my writing what I'm trying to do, like Derek Walcott, I'm really trying to give voice to our voices and like Toni Morrison for the African American society community, I'm trying to capture the very essence of Saint Lucian culture, the very essence of our way of life. To what extent I'm succeeding in doing so, well I guess the readers might have something to say about that. The Nobel Laureate Memorial Lectures will be recorded by the National Television Network. Visit our Facebook page at Nobel Laureate Festival Saint Lucia for festival events. I'm Delia De Law, goodbye.