Plimay Editions, based in Jacmel, is running a series of creative writing workshops. According to publisher Raynaldo Pierre-Louis, this program aims to help students reconnect with writing.
Le Nouvelliste: Who is Raynaldo Pierre Louis?
Raynaldo Pierre Louis: I am a poet, publisher, and professor of literature and philosophy, with a degree in Educational Sciences (literature and philosophy track), based in Jacmel. I run Plimay Editions (since 2021), an independent publishing house through which I support authors. I have been leading writing workshops since 2017, the year I started at cultural centers, notably in the Vallée de Jacmel and Belle-Anse, and I haven’t limited myself since then. I also run workshops at the Maurice Cadet Cultural Center in Jacmel, by invitation, as well as as part of various literary events. I have published six poetry collections and edited Voix de femmes, an anthology dedicated to contemporary women’s poetry, bringing together 35 female poets from different nationalities.
Plimay Éditions is organizing a series of creative writing workshops for four schools in Jacmel. How did this project come about?
It was born as a continuation of Semences. Unlike this new program, Semences didn’t come out of a writing workshop: they are writing exercises that I gave to my students as part of my literature classes at the International Christian Academy (ICA), where I teach. Gary Victor, when praising this book, kept telling me that this approach needed to be expanded to other schools. So, to carry the same approach elsewhere, I had to organize it differently: in the form of writing workshops, held outside of any school program.
This new project isn’t your first try, since you’ve already led a similar workshop that resulted in the collective work Semences, praised by the writer Gary Victor. How are they different?
That’s exactly where the difference lies. Semences came out of writing exercises integrated into my classes, with students I already knew, whom I had been guiding for a long time. This new program is based on full-fledged workshops in schools where I don’t have that teacher-student relationship. You have to build in just five mornings what a whole year of classes manages to establish.Can you briefly introduce this course to us (structure, methods, exercises, creation…)?
Five mornings, from nine to noon. In terms of teaching, I combine several methods. First, the audiovisual method: I rely on reading aloud, sometimes recordings or visual aids, to give students concrete models before they start writing. Next, the participatory method: no one stays a spectator, we exchange ideas, respond to each other’s texts, and reflect together. And finally, the constructivist method, which is the most central to me: the minimum necessary theory is there, but I avoid imposing it in a lecture-like way. We build it together through debates and interactions, with students encouraged to question, suggest, and adjust their own understanding along the way.Each session ends with a writing exercise, followed by the reading of the texts that the students have just produced themselves.
What is the goal? Which schools are included in this program?
The idea is to reconnect students with writing and reading, spark their creativity, encourage their intellectual independence, introduce them to different genres, and give them a first hands-on experience of publishing: that’s, I believe, the main point. Four schools are participating between July and August 2026: Marie Reine Immaculée (July 7-11), Institution Vie de France (July 20-24), ICOSA (August 3-7), and IDEPH, Institution du Bon Pasteur (August 10-14).
How many students will take part in this training? What academic level (NSII, NSIII…)?
We asked for a minimum of twenty students per school: Marie Reine Immaculée gathered twenty-one, Institution Vie de France eighteen. The students involved range from NSI to NSIV.How did you go about selecting the schoolchildren for this training?
The schools themselves choose their best students in literature, from among those who show a desire to participate.
Is this workshop focused on a very specific theme?
No, precisely to avoid limiting the students’ creativity. The workshop stays focused on techniques for writing modern poetry and short stories: a technical framework, but total freedom in terms of content, so that creativity can unfold without constraints.How do you think this training will help schoolchildren develop their creativity?
Writing to be published changes the very nature of the act: the student no longer writes for a grade, but first for themselves or for a reader who doesn’t exist yet. Just that thought forces them to find their own voice, to follow an idea through to the end instead of just brushing it. I believe this is the beginning of all true creativity: feeling that what you write matters, either for yourself or for someone else.Will literature save the world, Raynaldo Pierre Louis?
If the world is the sum of the individuals who make it up, then yes, to some extent, literature can save the world, because it first saves the individuals who are part of it. Personally, it saved me. It has also saved, before my eyes, more than one lost teenager by giving them a language to express what they carried without words. It might not be saving the whole world. But it’s already a lot.
