Celia Alexandra Sorhaindo

Celia Alexandra Sorhaindo was born in The Commonwealth of Dominica, West Indies. She was a member of the Dominica Link for Hands Across the Sea, a US based non-profit organization which aims to help raise child literacy levels in the Eastern Caribbean. Her poetry has been published in Anomaly, The Caribbean Writer, Moko on-line Magazine, Interviewing The Caribbean Journal, Susumba’s Book Bag and New Daughters of Africa (an international anthology of writing by women of African descent). Guabancex (Papillote Press) is her first collection of poems, explores her experiences and emotions, both during and after Hurricane Maria, a category 5 hurricane that hit and devastated Dominica on September 18, 2017. It was the worst hurricane recorded in history. Nothing would be the same after it.. The collection is named after the supreme storm deity of the ancient Taino people, which were located across Florida and much of the Caribbean. “We saw the worst side of nature, and the best and worst sides of human nature and went through incredible mental and physical challenges,” Sorhaido wrote in her website. “Things have not just returned to ‘business as usual’ […] For me, writing […] was a therapeutic exercise, a way of trying to make sense of, work through and process all that happened.”