Anansesem is a one-of-its-kind online magazine of Caribbean and related writing and illustration for children, by adults and children. Founded by Summer Edward, a budding Caribbean children’s literature scholar, the magazine seeks to provide a space to highlight the unique flavor of children’s writing and illustration by Caribbean people, and to thereby recognize and stimulate the children’s publishing industry in the Caribbean. Edward is also the magazine’s Managing Editor.

She says, “I am really trying with the Anansesem magazine to depart from the idea that Caribbean literature for adults is somehow more valid and more worthy of recognition than Caribbean children’s literature. I am convinced that Caribbean children’s literature needs to take itself seriously and that the world needs to take its writers and illustrators seriously, just like Walcott, Naipaul and Brathwaite have been taken seriously by the world. But we here in the Caribbean have to take it seriously first.”

Anansesem goes online as of Monday, May 24, 2010. Submissions will be reviewed by prominent Caribbean literature advocates, Anouska Kock, Carol Mitchell, Sandra Sealy and June South-Robinson.

Interested contributors can visit the Anansesem website at www.anansesem.com for submission guidelines and more information.

“I want the people who submit to and visit the magazine to sense that children’s literature is a whole other world of possibilities, and that it is just as intellectual, just as prestigious, just as rigorous as Caribbean literature for adults,” says Edward.