Writing and publishing are powerful, and like any power, if they fall into the wrong hands, it can be disastrous--but if they fall into the right hands, it can change the way we think about ourselves. It can be an act of rebellion. It's an act Lynn Sweeting knows all too well. Through her writing she uses language to snap her readers in tune to the realities of injustices felt by the marginalized in society--women, children, the handicapped--and through her greatest venture, WomanSpeak Journal, she has singlehandedly brought a scattered community together in a safe space to use language to change society. "Without voices of those from the fringes, we lose our greatest ideas," she points out. "These are the people who have great thoughts and visions, and without them we run the risk of becoming such a disempowered people. We need voices of those who know what it is to struggle for their lives, who write to save their lives, because these voices will shake us out of our apathy and paralyzed state." In her blog she shares personal, local, regional and international stories that give voice to those she believes society would rather see silenced, and in her poetry she masterfully weaves stories in language that are confrontational and defiant, yet poignant, conscious it is undergoing a sacred act of teaching its readers another side of history. To that end, she's been published in many journals and her work was shortlisted for the Small Axe Literary Competition Prize in Poetry in 2010. "If we can bring forth these struggles, we can find solutions for them," she says. "You can change disaster into a great wisdom and empowerment with writing and creativity." Yet Sweeting has always put pen to paper, working for a time as a journalist with PR companies. These experiences, however, always proved to frustrate her more than empower her, creating in her an unhappiness that only her publishing venture, WomanSpeak Journal, shook her out of. Meeting fellow writer and activist Helen Klonaris, she found a true friend and ally. Forming a kinship in each other for the idea they shared about the lack of Caribbean women writers' voices in society, they decided to address it through their publishing venture, The WomanSpeak Journal. "We knew that writing of any kind was political and transforming, and we knew that our project especially had the potential to change everything--to transform our worlds, change us, to reunite us with each other as women, and to reconnect ourselves to ourselves so that we could exist fully and authentically," she says. "All of that came out in a couple of conversations between Helen and I. We bumped into each other and met and spoke for a couple of hours; we had talked about all of this and decided we would make a book." Publishing--many for the first time--a number of female Bahamian writers and artists, the pieces, remembers Lynn, took risks, had uncomfortable conversations, and exposed truths that society would rather ignore. In fact, their first journal, published in 1992, was returned to them by a local bookstore, and was scandalized by its frank subject matter and artwork. Yet the book--that first scotch-taped WomanSpeak Journal whose 500 copies sold out--filled a void felt by many women in Bahamian society then. Sweeting and Klonaris believed men's voices where everywhere--in politics, in churches, in the media and in the art world. Women were scattered and divided, and the journal created a focused space for them to come together in an act of community and resistance to change the ontological landscape of language in the Caribbean and talk about what it meant to be a woman, especially a woman in the Caribbean, in radical feminist voices. "We asked ourselves, why does the patriarchal culture work so hard to stop us from gathering together and hearing each other's voice?" says Sweeting. "And it was because there was enormous empowerment to be found in that type of gathering. When we gathered together we knew that we could be able to realize that we exist, that we matter, that our stories and our experiences matter, and we would remember that we never came here to be victims, we came here to live creatively, and as Helen wrote, 'to be our sister's keeper.'" Indeed, WomanSpeak presents to us the perfect local example of published as an act of activism, revolution and rebellion. Sweeting remembers their decision to become publishers as an act of empowerment. "When we started in the 90s we had no authority to call ourselves publishers or editors," she remembers. "So we took that authority and used that as first act of resistance against a system that would rather us be quiet and miserable. We thought 'oh, this is impossible, so we'll do it. We can't do it, so we will'." As in any act of such outright resistance, the pair experienced quite a backlash and enjoyed printing the letters of criticism that came to them in the following issues of WomanSpeak in 1994 and again in 1996--the very fact that people took the time to tell the pair how wrong their journal was meant the journal was having it's desired effect. Change cannot happen, after all, without discomfort--and such stories shook people out of their apathetic states by confronting their realities. Yet the books functioned as a lifeline as well, not just for the women who so desperately needed their voices to shine loud and clear, but also for its publishers--this act of publishing, says Sweeting, was also an act of survival. They were writing and publishing to save their lives, and in doing so, they saved, too, the lives of their readers--for every critical letter, they published letters from women all over the Caribbean who had found joy and solidarity in the pages of WomanSpeak. "When we put out books and stories, that is what we're doing--making sure we are not left out of the story of The Caribbean," says Sweeting. "We get to write the story. We made our own home, our own place to live. That is so crucial." Despite the drive by this group of women to continue their stories, after four successful issues, the WomanSpeak journal underwent a dormant period as Klonaris traveled abroad for school and the community scattered, though still kept in touch and supported one another. In an age of no Internet and no print on demand publishing, the project had to wait for the right time--which came just two years ago, when the writing community seemed to explode into a flurry of activity, with new writers and publishers emerging on the scene to cultivate a renaissance in Bahamian art. Klonaris, though not relocating home, started the Bahamas Writer's Summer Institute, gathering together another community of Caribbean writers to exchange and create and add to the rich Caribbean literary heritage. Print on demand, like lulu.com, was in full swing, freeing local writers from needing to print an enormous amount of books at once with local printer minimums. A spark was ignited, and Sweeting took up the mantle again to publish more issues of WomanSpeak. The fifth volume, published in 2010, was cause for a celebration among the community who remembered the special power and voice of the WomanSpeak journal, and an opportunity for new writers to enter into that dialogue with fresh perspectives. Currently, Sweeting is working on the sixth volume for the January 2012 publication which will include work from Antigua, Trinidad, Jamaica and The Bahamas. The journal has indeed come a long way--from scotch-taped and spiral bindings and operating in an Internet-less world of disconnect--and now rises back onto the scene, a beautiful and vibrant collection of women writing from small places fragmented across the ocean. Yet Sweeting knows there is a long way to go in a society that is still deeply prejudiced, and hopes writers and artists continue to come together and challenge themselves and their societies through creative activism. "All we can do is sort of hold on to each other and push each other into these arenas, because we're not protected and we're not safe if we hide away, and we're not happy if we just sit politely and say, 'Well, our stuff isn't that good and our work isn't that important'," she says. "Sexism is still at work in publishing an art. We must not waste any time; we must gather ourselves together and put ourselves out there. We must include ourselves. If there's nowhere to put your art, then you have your incentive to create it."

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