The cover of the Guyana Annual 2006-2007

Fittingly, given that the Caribbean will host cricket's largest competition - Cricket World Cup 2007 - in two months' time, the cover of the Guyana Annual 2006-2007 is dominated by a collage of cricket stars.

And when the Annual makes its official appearance next Thursday at a launch at Castellani House at 5 pm readers will find in it, among the other literary feasts, articles on Guyanese cricket.

Its editor Petamber Persaud notes that this is the Annual's ninth consecutive appearance since it was resuscitated in 1998 by Texas-based Guyanese Dr Tulsi Dayal Singh.

Persaud, who is also the coordinator of writers in concert, said the 2006-2007 Annual also offers "Balgobin stories in the tradition of Guyanese folklore," proverbs, festivals of Guyana, attitudes of young people to HIV and AIDS and pen-portraits of Helen Taitt, Philip Moore and Paul O'Hara among other articles. As is usual, prize-winning poetry and short stories from six competitions held are also included and the prizes for these will be handed over at the launch.

The Annual, a Guyanese family magazine, was first published in December 1915. It had 100 pages and cost eight cents, says Nigel Westmaas in his Short History of the Annual which first appeared in the 1998 edition.

Then called the Chronicle Christmas Annual it continued in fits and bursts, incorporating colour and surviving name changes to today. Among its more distinguished contributors were: E.R. Burrowes, Celeste Dolphin, Laurence Byass, Zorina Ishmail, Basil Hinds, Nellie Wishart, B.O. Wills, Donald Robinson, Leonard Westmaas, Peter Britton, Wilson Harris, Basil Balgobin, Archibald Oswald, Claude Robinson and Gordon Woolford.