The Story Here

So... 2020 huh? It's 10:15 am AST as I start this, so I'm still a little hesitant to say ' we've made it y'all! ' because... 2020.  In fact, as I write, the volcanoes  La Soufriere in St. Vincent and Mt. Pelee in Martinique are bubbling, prompting the second-highest alert level in SVG and a yellow alert in Martinique - which hasn't been given since 1932. Just 2020 doing what it has done. If I had a dollar for every time this year I wrote in a speech or press release about what an "unprecedented" and "extraordinary" year this has been, I'd have a nice little stack. For me, it begs the question - what will the story of 2020 be? Not the 'story of the year' - we know that is the COVID-19 pandemic , but when we tell the story of this year in the future, how will it be told? Earlier in the year, I saw a comment on an Instagram thread about how challenging it will be for students in the year 2050 when they have to take the ' His...

 I've always loved stories. Perhaps it was inevitable, being the daughter of a librarian and an avid bookworm. I come from a family of story-lovers and storytellers too - older cousins who were screenwriters , playwrights and journalists - plenty of journalists. They showered me with books and magazines - both those they brought for me whenever they visited and volumes left behind at my grandparents' home - and imbued me with a love of stories. Growing up, dinner time was spent with my mum absorbed in a book or maybe a Newsweek or New Yorker magazine and with me digging into the latest edition of the Babysitters Club. I eventually realised that other people consider it rude to read at the dinner table but at home, dinner was quiet, page-turning bliss. I read voraciously and wrote obsessively - plays, poems, short stories and too many unfinished novels to count. I was editor of my secondary school yearbook. Journalism seemed a natural fit for me and as soon I could, I made my...