Marsha Massiah

  • Marsha Massiah, Founder and Executive Director

    Marsha Massiah is the Founder and Executive Director of the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF), the only U.S. literary festival dedicated exclusively to Caribbean literature and indigenous storytelling. Held each September, the BCLF has become a leading destination for Caribbean and diaspora writers, celebrating luminaries such as Jamaica Kincaid, Julia Alvarez, Lorna Goodison, and its patron and prize namesake, Dr Elizabeth Nunez.
    Born and raised in Trinidad & Tobago, Marsha credits her homeland with shaping her creative consciousness. As the festival’s chief visionary, she leads its programming, partnerships, and growth with a clear mission: to build a bridge for Caribbean stories and secure their rightful place in the global literary landscape.
    Her philosophy holds that Caribbean literature is not a peripheral voice but a central force in the world’s canon. She champions systems that ensure Caribbean creatives are recognised, compensated, and sustained, a response to the need for intellectual and economic sovereignty within the arts.
    For her, Caribbean stories are a form of genetic inheritance,  the unlikely fruit of resilience, joy, and ancestral fortitude born from centuries of labour and exploitation. Through her leadership, the BCLF is democratising access to literature and revolutionising conversations around the literary arts.
    Her conceptual projects include the Caribbean Fiction Collection at the Center for Fiction, the acclaimed Cocoa Pod podcast (ranked among Apple’s top 10% of podcasts in 2022), and the BCLF Short Fiction Story Competition, a fertile pipeline nurturing the next generation of Caribbean writers.
    A frequent collaborator across creative disciplines, she has shared conversations with Asha Lovelace, Mahmood Patel, Freetown Collective, and global cultural figures including Roxane Gay, Edwidge Danticat, and Sir Hilary Beckles.
    She is the recipient of multiple honours, including the Caribbean Life Impact Award and CBN’s U.S. Caribbean Boss Lady distinction.
    Marsha lives in Brooklyn with her son Kai, and spends what’s left of her time inducting Gen Alpha into the magic, power and pride of the storytelling tradition of their ancestors.

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Yona Deshommes

Yona Deshommes, Publisher

Yona Deshommes began her professional career in education as a certified teaching assistant and Academic Coordinator at Edwin Gould Academy, a residential treatment center in Chestnut Ridge, NY, where she created and facilitated several cultural and educational programs for at-risk youth from the juvenile justice and foster care systems.   

Her love and passion for writing led her to a 20-year career in book publicity, where she served as an Associate Director of Publicity at Atria Books, an imprint of one of the largest publishers in the world, Simon & Schuster. In August of 2020, she entered a new chapter in her career by establishing her own company, Riverchild Media, a public relations firm specializing in promoting books by and for authors of color. In December of that same year, she and 4 other professional colleagues formed Collective 5 Entertainment, a literary, talent management, public relations, marketing /branding firm that recently welcomed its first New York Times best-selling book, THE GRIFT. In 2023, she launched her LIVING OUT LOUD literary series, which featured authors who live their lives unapologetically and purposefully. She has hosted actor, director, and author Eriq LaSalle, Prof. Anita Hill, comedian and actors Bill Bellamy and Cedric the Entertainer, award-winning actor and author Courtney B Vance, and award-winning entertainer Common!  

She now lends her vast experience in publishing to a new role at the Harlem Book Fair, the largest BIPOC book fair in the country. She became a finer woman in the Spring of 2021 as a proud member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated.  

 

 

Elise Dillsworth

  • Elise Dillsworth, Literary Agent

    Elise Dillsworth became a literary agent in 2012. Previously she was a commissioning editor at Virago Press, an imprint of Little Brown Book Group. She co-founded the Diversity in Publishing Network in 2004, which received the New Venture Award from Women in Publishing in 2005. She represents literary and general fiction and non-fiction – especially autobiography and memoir, with a keen aim to reflect writing that is international. Her authors have won or been nominated for many awards, including the Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Caine Prize, Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Edge Hill Prize, Forward Prize, International DUBLIN Literary Award, Republic of Consciousness Prize, T. S. Eliot Prize and Women’s Prize for Fiction.


  • For more information about Elise and her authors please visit www.elisedillsworthagency.com.

 

Patricia Turnbull

  • Dr. Patricia Turnbull, Author, Poet

    Patricia G. Turnbull is a writer, cultural activist and independent scholar. A former Principal Lecturer in Humanities at H. Lavity Stoutt Community College, she has for four decades been teaching, mentoring, and introducing new writers to the Lit life.

    A member of the Editorial Board of The Caribbean Writer, Dr. Turnbull has edited, reviewed, interviewed, judged and even sold books for published writers. She has facilitated meetings, workshops and readings at home with renowned writers such as George Lamming, Velma Pollard, David Edgecombe, Sonia Sanchez and Lasana M. Sekou.

    A fellow of the University of Miami Summer Institute for Creative Writing, Dr.Turnbull’s awards include the BVI Badge of Honour and the UWI Pelican Award. Her writing is published in diverse anthologies and literary journals including The Caribbean Writer, Moko Magazine, Acalabash Caribbean Poetry Portfolo,  Sent Lisi: Poems and Art of St.Lucia, and Where I See the Sun – Contemporary Poetry in the Virgin Islands. She is also the author of three books – Rugged Vessels, Can These Stones Talk? and Ti Koko and Kush Kush.