Marlon James, Ian McEwan and Sheryl Lee Ralph lit up the Jamaican book event, celebrating the small island’s gargantuan cultural footprint with readings, discussions and DJs

“Do I look like a rebel?” Booker prize winner Marlon James jokingly asks the crowd moments after walking on stage, head-banging his dreads to the sound of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.

If your only experience of literary festivals are polite, well-mannered affairs inside tents in the British countryside, the Calabash literary festival, held on Jamaica’s Treasure Beach, hits differently. It’s not just the setting but the rare joy of seeing a majority-Black audience and roster at a literary event. It’s a festival infused with the magic and fire born of resistance.

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