WomanSpeak, A Journal of Literature and Art by Caribbean Women, has announced the release of volume six/2012. The new anthology from WomanSpeak Books brings together 25 writers, poets and painters in a full colour, limited edition volume edited by Lynn Sweeting, designed by Julia P. Ames, and featuring cover art by Chantal Bethel and Ashley Knowles.

To celebrate the release WomanSpeak is collaborating with Tongues of the Ocean, the noted online literary journal edited by Nicolette Bethel. tongues of the ocean is devoting an entire issue to selected work from this new collection, with new pieces going live on the website every week

Volume six is especially themed, Women Speaking for The Earth. In this collection writers explore the deep interconnectedness between creative island women and the female Earth. They also address the environmental emergencies they face as Earthling women in the Caribbean, including the pollution of the ocean, the vanishing coastlines, deforestation, as well as the responsibilities we bear in it all.

“These writers are not just writing about nature,” said Sweeting about the new issue, “they are giving Mother Earth herself a voice. This is so important these days, because if we could hear the voice of the Earth as she speaks to us perhaps then we’d be inspired to stop hurting and exploiting her, and begin to protect and defend her instead.”

As always WomanSpeak volume six/2012 is dedicated to providing a forum for women writers with diverse points of view, who break silences that need to be broken, who discuss taboo subjects, who challenge oppression by telling the truth about Caribbean women’s lives. Rape, homophobia, religious oppression and intolerance, sexuality, grief and loss are among the forbidden subjects they are bravely writing about.

"Beauty" by Carla Campbell

New works by noted writers like Lelawattee Manoo Rahming, Marion Bethel, Nicolette Bethel, and Patricia Glinton Meicholas of The Bahamas and Joanne Hillhouse of Antigua are included in this collection, as well as the work of emerging writers like Sonia Farmer and Angelique Nixon of the Bahamas, Vashti Bowlah of Jamaica, and Danielle Boodoo-Fortunè and Simone Leid of Trinidad and Tobago. There are new voices too, including poet Anita L. MacDonald and fiction writer Keisha Lynne Ellis, and new artists like Carla Campbell and Ashley Knowles in the collection.

Beautiful full colour art by established and new painters make the new WomanSpeak a literary journal unlike any other, an essential book not only for writers but for painters too and for all who love art by conscious Caribbean women.

WomanSpeak was founded in 1991 by Lynn Sweeting, Helen Klonaris and Dionne Benjamin Smith to provide a forum for Bahamian and Caribbean women’s creative work, to nurture that creativity by publishing fine literature and art by women, to discover and publish emerging and developing writers, to preserve publications for future audiences and to create a space where community and sisterhood among writers and artists of the Caribbean can be cultivated and encouraged.

WomanSpeak volume six will be available August 2012 at select book and art stores in Nassau.

"Blackbird Joy" by Danielle Boodoo-Fortunè

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