World Literature: Marcia Douglas (UK, Jamaica), “The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive”

Whiting Award-winner Marcia Douglas is joined by World Literature connoisseur Anderson Tepper to discuss her forthcoming book, The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive, a startling new dream-like vision of Jamaica to be released April 2025.

“I challenge you to resist Marcia Douglas’ infectious, pulsating prose. The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: A Novel in Bass Riddim swept me away. Her new book, The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive, is just as entrancing: a choral novel bubbling up from the depths of history. Her work spans genres—speculative fiction, eco-spiritualism—and remixes them, creating a whole new vision of Jamaica”  —Anderson Tepper, City of Asylum Curator for World Literature

Zooming into tight focus on present-day life and dashing deep into the past in turns, the pace is fast and fierce in The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive, which continues Marcia Douglas’ “speculative ancestral project” (The Whiting Foundation). The Shante Dream Arkive brings alive a mosaic of characters—all searching through history for something or someone lost to the island: a mother searches for her missing child through time and space; an undocumented migrant struggles with loss while living in the US; a youth wanders through dream-gates seeking liberation and the lost parts of himself. And one key to the whole is Zora Neale Hurston’s left-behind camera. Each chapter opens like an aperture onto another aspect of the dream story. And each and every potent dream story contains the spirit, beauty, and riddim of Jamaica.

Preorder a copy of Marcia’s book, The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive, at City of Asylum Bookstore.

About the Author:

Marcia Douglas was born in the UK, and grew up in Kingston, Jamaica. The author of novels, poems, and essays, she is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Whiting Foundation, and a UK Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The Marvellous Equations of the Dread was longlisted for the 2016 Republic of Consciousness Prize and the 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She is a College Professor of Distinction at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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