Female scribes read their writes thru the boros

Female writers flaunted their prowess during Women’s History Month to provide a potpourri of topical books pertinent to readers of every gender.

The women represented Caribbean storytellers, novelists and poets who traveled from borough to borough in order to promote A Spring Book Fair featuring Caribbean scribes.

Early in March, Pat Chin was first to co-host a gathering at her Queens-based VP Records headquarters. Along with Everybody’s Magazine publisher, Herman Hall, the reggae music promoter joined forces to sponsor an all-inclusive, gender-friendly travelling library.

Last Sunday at the Coal Pot in Brooklyn they shone the spotlight on Chin’s “My Reggae Music Journey” and Hall’s “two easy reading history books on revolutionary leaders Julien Fedon and Burnett Coburn.”

The collaborators also booked Jamaica’s James Haynes’ “Jah Jerry – Legacy of an Original Skatalites.”

And in the county of Kings, readers featured Grenadian Anthony W. Deriggs —“We Kinda Talk,” Jamaica’s Keisha-Gaye Anderson — “A Spell For Living” and Trinidad & Tobago’s Dr. Meagan A. Sylvester who provided insider chat about “Carnival, Culture Resilience.”

Spence, a renowned inspirational speaker and author of “Not My Mother’s Daughter” represented Jamaica.

Her latest “365 Days of Liberation” expands her vision from “Sunday Afternoon Energy” poems, “Nurturing the Garden of Joy” essays and the 2020 compilation “My Can.”

Actress Sheryl Lee Ralph returns to Brooklyn for “DIVA 2.0…”

For the second time actress/singer/activist/author Sheryl Lee stopped into Brooklyn to sell her “DIVA” lamentations.

She first passed through the borough to personally deliver her interpretation of the pretentious moniker often assigned to narcissistic individuals after publishing a comprehensive alternative in 2012 titled “Redefining: DIVA — Life Lessons From An Original Dreamgirl.”

The acronym she said translated Divinely Inspired Victorious Aware.

Overwhelmingly accepted more than a decade ago, it seems Ralph’s memoir only tipped the surface of her many achievements because the multitalented celebrity has collaborated singing with Cedella Marley, the daughter of the king and queen of reggae; featured as an actress in “The Mighty Quinn” a film starring Denzel Washington, headlined her own one-woman concert, returned in recurring roles on Broadway, spearheaded a movement to squash stigma against HIV/AIDS and all the while, juggling a career with domesticity as  mother of two children.

On the initial stop into the borough Ralph held an intimate conversation with admirers who gathered in a privately owned Brooklyn home in order to respond to queries about her Broadway experience in the musical “Dreamgirls.”

The dialogue lasted late into the evening with many yearning to get the tea on an alleged tiff between often described diva personified singer Diana Ross.

Some guests assumed jealousy by the Supremes star might have been the source of a feud fueled by media attention from the fictional character Deena Jones role Ralph portrayed on the Great White Way.

However, the Rutgers University graduate candidly explained then that admiration of the legendary lead singer of the Motown trio persevered even enabling a bonding encounter at Jamaica’s Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues festival.

This time around, Ralph introduced “DIVA: 2.0: Life Lessons From Me To You” to audience who sold-out the Billie Holiday Theater at Brooklyn’s Restoration Corporation in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Continuing the conversation about her storied experiences, the founder of the Jamerican Film & Music Festival, Jamerican Dreamgirl and wife of Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Hughes offered basic tips on endurance and survival.

Since taking center stage singing the Black anthem at the Super Bowl and winning the best supporting actress Emmy award for her role in the television comedy “Abbott Elementary,” social media has been buzzing about her revelation regarding an alleged assault by a famous TV judge.

Perhaps that and other hot topics have proven to be alluring reasons to read her revelations. Reportedly, “books were selling like hot-cakes.”

According to Hall, “everyone who attended left with a book and some people bought two and three copies for their friends.”

Although Women’s History Month is nearing its end, the Spring Book Fair will continue through the season.

Catch You On The Inside!