A professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia has had an honor that few South Carolina residents have. Dr. Kwame Dawes just returned a day ago from New York City’s Lincoln Center, where he won an Emmy Award.
During recent months, Dr. Dawes , the distinguished poet in residence at the university, made five trips to Jamaica to learn and write about the impact of HIV/AIDS.
Dawes documentary, “Hope: Living & Loving with HIV in Jamaica” is a web site–which includes poems, photos, video and music inspired by the people Dawes met.
Dawes says the project began with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, and the Virginia Courtly Review, which brought in Dawes.
Dawes grew up in Jamaica. He says when he went to record interviews, that made all the difference. “I had good entry points because some of these are people I knew. Some of the people living with the disease are people I knew. It gave me an access that a reporter from the outside would not necessarily get.”
