BELIZE CITY, Wed. Mar. 30, 2022– The first issue of an annual anthology of Belizean poems and prose was officially released last Saturday by the newest publishing enterprise in the country, Bent Pin Press. The process started in March 2021, and culminated with the publication of Issue No. 01, which features the work of 17 Belizean storytellers whose poems and short fiction pieces made the final cut from a pool of nearly 200 submissions, according to the editor-in-chief of Bent Pin Press, Samantha Singh.
“It’s definitely been an adventure,” Singh stated, “there’s been a lot of ups and downs, and it’s also been a learning process for me, for sure, but it’s been so rewarding. It’s been so great to work with so many different writers within the country.”
That collaboration came from an effort to support Belizean writers and to reinvigorate Belize’s literary culture while creating a platform through which local artists can gain international exposure.
“I think that the real reason why we wanted to start Bent Pin Press is, we really are interested in supporting the writing community locally. It’s a personal passion, I think…. To be able to provide another place for the writers in Belize to come together and work together was really the push, and I think more than that, we wanted to have a place that is both Belize and a part of the international community, so really I think those two principles together are why we wanted to found Bent Pin,” Singh explained.
While the editorial board had no set theme in mind initially for this first issue, they said that truly intimate Belizean experiences seen through the eyes of the Belizean authors is a refrain in the content that reverberates through the entire anthology.
Singh noted, “What we ended up with, I think, came together to represent a truly Belizean experience, a very intimate personal experience that Belizeans can relate to. They are pieces as opposed to speaking to Belize as a tourism destination or a place to visit or a place that is beautiful, it spoke to the Belizean experience and living as a Belizean.”
Andre Habet, the assistant editor of Bent Pin Press, pointed out that targeting unpublished and up-and-coming talented writers was also a primary motivation.
“There were a lot of people who felt like their work did not have a home space to go towards. They couldn’t imagine who would be interested in it, and so when Samantha started announcing Bent Pin Press coming about to me, I was interested in us finding those people, the people who have been writing privately for a very long time and just really because of lack of experience, because of lack of apprenticeship, they didn’t know what it would take to get their work published, and so in one way Bent Pin Press serves as an entry point to people who I hope are published much more widely published beyond Bent Pin Press right,” Habet said.
He added, “This is hopefully just the start for them, that not only are they published here, but hopefully through other workshops, through other panels in the future we can do. I want Belizean writers to be elevated to where you know when somebody goes to a store in the United States, in the UK, in our Caribbean sisters and brothers’ countries, that they go in a store and they see a book by a Belizean author, they recognize that name from maybe some other journal, and they want to pick up a book, you know, pick up a novel, pick up a book of poetry.”
One of the writers whose poetry is featured in this first issue of Bent Pin Press’s literary journal is the author of Crossroads: A Collection of Poems, Khaila Gentle, who is incidentally, also a staff writer with us here at AMANDALA. Her dexterous style of storytelling has already captivated many in Belize and abroad, with her book of poems receiving praise and respect from various quarters. In reference to the selection of writers such as Gentle, the assistant editor of Bent Pin Press, Andre Habet, said, “it’s really just wise on our part to hitch our bandwagon on to the people who are gonna be stars.”
The team at Bent Pin Press includes its publisher and editor-in-chief, Samantha Singh; co-editor, Bianca King; and assistant editor, Andre Habet. These three are also readers of the pieces, along with Gisselle Hernandez, who is responsible for public relations, and Alina Scott.
Issue No. 1 features cover artwork by Taiwanese-Belizean artist Yaoling Lee. The cover image is one of her many personal sketches depicting everyday life in Belize. In the scene featured in this particular piece of art, people are buying fast food at a popular joint in the heart of the city, Fibbers. Singh said that her stumbling upon the piece turned out to be serendipitous, since it meshed perfectly with the mood of the overall publication.
“It’s not the sort of piece that she typically sells; those are her sketches, personal pieces for her, as she shared with us, but it’s about the beauty that she sees in parts of Belize that other people don’t that I think is the spirit of a lot of pieces and the sort of work we are looking to publish,” Singh shared.
The hard copy of Issue No. 1 is being sold for just $30BZD. The journal can also be purchased online on the company’s website via the link https://www.bentpinpress.com/bookshop/p/issue-no-1. Those interested in purchasing a copy locally can make a deposit in Bent Pin Press’s Belize Bank account:194099019120000, after which they can email screenshots of confirmed payment and their address to [email protected] and await a message that their copy has been dispatched. The editorial board is also seeking to partner with possible vendors who would like to carry the book for sale in their stores.
The artists featured in this publication include Abigail Gongora, Andrea N. West, Anthony Rath, Arnulfo Kantun, Cheyenne Williams, Christopher DeShield, E.A. Luna, Gerardo Polanco, Jomarie Lanza, Junell “Etheralting” Sanker, Khaila Gentle, Kory Alexander, Kyraan Gregory Gabourel, Rafael Gamero, Toni Acevedo Klassen, Ubaldimir Guerra, and Zee Edgell.