Start Here

New here? Start with these five essays.

If you are new here, this is the place to start. The archive goes back further, but these five essays will tell you more about who I am and what this site is about than any separate introduction I could write.

Read them in any order. Or read them in this one.

Eight Cities and One Question
I have lived in eight cities across four continents. Each move was professional and deliberate. And each one returned me to the same question I started asking in Antigua.
Elliott D. PaigeElliott D. Paige

The biography. Antigua to Barbados to Santo Domingo to Geneva to Atlanta to Lisbon — and what a life spent moving across those places actually adds up to.

What It Means to Be From Somewhere
A personal reflection on Caribbean diaspora, identity, and the cost—and gift—of carrying home across decades and distance.
Elliott D. PaigeElliott D. Paige

On Caribbean diaspora identity, the WhatsApp group you never quite leave, and the particular grammar of belonging to a place you no longer live in.

The Light Here Is Different | Elliott D. Paige
After 30 years moving through cities for work or school, I chose Lisbon deliberately. I’m still working out what it’s a reckoning with.
Elliott D. PaigeElliott D. Paige

On choosing Lisbon deliberately, after thirty years of moving for work — and on what it means to finally stop and let a place become yours.

Caste, Grief, and the Audacity of Origin
Ava DuVernay asked who deserves to be the subject of cinema. Two years on, the question still lands differently if you know the answer from both ends.
Elliott D. PaigeElliott D. Paige

On Ava DuVernay's film and the question underneath it: who gets to be at the center of an epic, and whose grief is allowed to anchor a story?

Somewhere You Can’t Find: On Knowing Filmmakers and Losing Their Films
Two Caribbean filmmakers. Real festival careers. Real audiences. And almost impossible to find on any platform most people actually use. On the infrastructure of visibility.
Elliott D. PaigeElliott D. Paige

On Maharaki, Howard Allen, and the infrastructure problem that keeps Caribbean and African films invisible to the very audiences that need them most.

If any of those land, the newsletter is the right next step. No schedule, no noise — just writing when there's something worth saying.