MERLIT-VUB is pleased to invite you to a reading and discussion with acclaimed writer, Alecia McKenzie on 20 September 2025 @ 15:30, at the VUB/ULB's Learning & Innovation Centre, Brussels. This reading is the closing event of the conference Writing Meritocracy. The reading is open to the public and free of charge.
A woman with a future in finance and an office with a vista of the Brooklyn skyline drops her career to become a gardener. A prospective basketball star turns his back on the path envisioned for him to follow a vocation as an artist. An ‘undocumented’ migrant worker in charge of the dust, dinner and the dog at an address on Brussels’ affluent Avenue Louise finds value in pragmatism. Imagining and juxtaposing a great variety of ‘roads taken’ – some by choice, others by circumstance – Alecia McKenzie interrogates concepts of work and explores different kinds of valorisation in relation to work. Her novels and stories display and dissect meritocratic ideals by exposing hierarchies that privilege certain kinds of work while undervaluing others. At the same time, she affirms the significance of art and literature as vital cultural work and psychic process, positioning artistic labour as profound and necessary contribution to human and social life. On Saturday 20 September at 15:30, Alecia McKenzie will read excerpts from a selection of works and engage in a moderated conversation with the participants of the Writing Meritocracy conference.
Alecia McKenzie is a Jamaican writer, editor and painter currently based between France and Belgium. Her first collection of short stories (Satellite City) and her debut novel (Sweetheart) have both won Commonwealth literary prizes. Sweetheart has been translated into French (Trésor) and was awarded the Prix Carbet des lycéens in 2017, while Satellite City has been translated into Dutch as Bella Vista. Other books include Stories from Yard (first published in Italian translation as Racconti giamaicani, translator E. Nones), Doctor’s Orders, When the Rain Stopped in Natland, and A Million Aunties – longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and featured in The New York Times. Her latest publications are the bilingual edition of the story Gone to the Dogs (Madame) / De Perros (Madame) (Spanish transl. / pref. E. M. D. Almarza) and the bilingual collection of poetry Unarmed Mariners / Marinheiros Desarmados (Portuguese transl. H. Lopes). A video installation based on the latter and entitled Albatrossed / Unarmed Mariners will be on display at the conference venue.
McKenzie’s work has appeared in a range of literary magazines and in anthologies such as Stories from Blue Latitudes, The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories, Light Transports, Global Tales, Girls Night In, To Exist is to Resist, Rómanska Ameríka, and Lovers Rock. She was shortlisted for the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and longlisted for the 2019 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. She has edited / co-edited two collections of contemporary stories.
Her journalism articles have appeared in international publications including The Wall Street Journal / Europe, The Guardian, New African magazine, Black Enterprise, Opera Now, Chess Life, and the former International Herald Tribune. She has been a long-time contributor to a global press agency and has also directed the arts reporting site SWAN since 2012.
As a visual artist, she has participated in exhibitions in Kingston, Singapore, Paris, Nantes, Bersenbrück and other towns, and has produced the cover artwork for two of her books. She gives occasional creative writing courses in Paris, after being a lecturer in communications at a liberal arts college in Brussels early in her career.
Website: www.aleciamckenzie.com
Chair: Eva Ulrike Pirker
