The third collection of fiction titled, "A Permanent Freedom" by the gifted West Indian writer and academic, Dr. Curdella Forbes will be launched at the Undercroft, The University of the West Indies, Mona on Monday, February 9, 2009 at 6 pm. The guest speaker will be Professor Emerita Maureen Warner-Lewis.

The launch is organized by the Department of Literatures in English, UWI, Mona in association with the West Indies Association of Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (WIACLALS). A Permanent Freedom (Peepal Tree Press) is a piece of creative work marked by a prodigious use of Standard English and Jamaican Creole in a seamless, memorable manner.

The book explores the complexities of human relationships through the nine stories which feature overlapping characters delving into issues of love, death and spirituality and in so doing provides some psychological insight through the characterization. It also brings to the fore the migrant experience and their challenges.

Curdella Forbes’ creative work includes two critically acclaimed collections of short stories, "Songs of Silence" (2002) and "Flying with Icarus and Other Stories" (2003). The Department of Literatures in English is gratified that she is coming home, to Jamaica and to the Mona Campus, for the launch of the provocative, carefully crafted collection Describing Forbes’s earlier collection Flying with Icarus, Mervyn Morris has said “This is an outstanding collection. Curdella Forbes’s eloquent, often moving, stories bear comparison with the best West Indian literature’.  With this new volume, Curdella Forbes consolidates a well-earned reputation as an outstanding West Indian writer.

Dr. Forbes, who is currently Associate Professor of Caribbean Literature at Howard University, was until July 2008 Senior Lecturer in Literatures in English at the UWI, Mona Campus, an institution she served from 1995.  Her commitment to education is illustrated by a longstanding involvement with the Caribbean Examinations Council, including her continuing role as Chief Examiner for CSEC – English B and her organization and delivery of teacher training workshops for CXC and various Jamaican educational entities.              

Dr. Forbes’s postgraduate students at UWI have benefited from her cutting edge research, and she was awarded, in 2007, the Faculty of Humanities and Education prize for Best Research Publication (Book) for From Nation to Diaspora: Samuel Selvon, George Lamming and the Cultural Performance of Gender. She has also written extensively in Caribbean and international journals on Caribbean literature, Caribbean literary criticism, gender and Shakespearean criticism.