Submitted by LIFRC

This year, the Lopez Island Family Resource Center will surprise its audience by bringing an author from an island beyond the shores of the U.S. On Saturday, June 25 at 6:30 p.m., Jamaican author and essayist Sharon Leach will take the stage to entertain listeners with stories from Jamaica that are quite different from our own. A dialogue between Sharon Leach and Lopez writer and filmmaker, Laurie Parker, will follow, facilitated by Kip Greenthal.

Over the years, LIFRC board member Kip Greenthal has collaborated with a variety of organizations, including Copper Canyon Press, Hugo House and Seattle Arts & Lectures, to bring authors to speak to issues pertinent to the mission of the LIFRC: empowering the well being, educational and life success of children and families on Lopez Island. “I seek authors who bring their personal stories reflecting their own family struggles, issues of education, immigration, and class differences within a culture,” Greenthal says. “This year Laurie Parker introduced me to Sharon Leach after working with her at the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica.”

Parker was impressed with Leach’s unusually penetrating clarity about people, especially women of limited means and resources. “Her work is intelligent and incredibly entertaining,” says Parker. “Her short stories are as deceptively simple as Raymond Carver’s and her voice as distinct.”

For the first time, in addition to the fundraiser, the LIFRC is excited to sponsor Sharon Leach to teach a short story writing workshop on Lopez, June 21, 22, 23. To register and for more information about the writing workshop, go to the LIFRC website at www.lifrc.org.

Sharon Leach was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and educated at the University of the West Indies. She works as a columnist, copy editor, proofreader and freelance writer for the Jamaica Observer, as well as editor for Bookends, the paper’s weekly literary arts supplement. Over 100 of her short stories have appeared in the Jamaica Observer newspaper’s Literary Arts magazine since 2000. Sharon’s first book of short fiction, “What You Can’t Tell Him: Stories,” was published in 2006 by Starapple Publishers (Trinidad). A second collection of stories, “Love It When You Come, Hate It When You Go,” was published by Peepal Tree Press (Great Britain). In 2011, she was a recipient of the Musgrave Bronze Medal from the Council of the Institute of Jamaica for distinguished eminence in the field of Literature. She has participated in the NGC Bocas Lit Fest 2012 in Trinidad, and in 2014, the PEN America World Voices Festival in New York.

We are fortunate to have the rare opportunity to study with and be entertained by Sharon Leach in person on Lopez. Tickets for the fundraiser are on sale through the LIFRC website and Lopez Center. Proceeds are critical to funding the many educational and social service programs sponsored by the LIFRC.