Bocas Lit Fest has announced the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature shortlists. Books by fifteen authors with roots in eight countries have been shortlisted. Winners of the three genre categories will be announced on April 6, 2025, and the overall winner of the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature will be announced on Saturday May 3, 2025, at the annual Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain. Here’s the information (from bocaslitfest):
The authors of the five books shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry include two veterans alongside three debut poets:
Polkadot Wounds, by Anthony Vahni Capildeo (T&T/Scotland) (Carcanet Press)
West of West Indian, by Linzey Corridon (St Vincent and the Grenadines) (Mawenzi House Publishers Ltd.)
Some of Us Can Go Back Home, by Yashika Graham (Jamaica) (Blue Banyan Books)
Getting Through: New and Selected Poems, by Mervyn Taylor (T&T) (@BeltwayEditions)
Coco Island, by Christine Roseeta Walker (Jamaica) (Carcanet Press)
The five books shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction similarly bring together three first-time authors with two already celebrated multi-genre writers:
Village Weavers, by Myriam J. A. Chancy (Haiti) (Tin House)
Sweet Li Jie, by David Dabydeen (Guyana) (Peepal Tree Press)
The Pages of the Sea, by Anne Hawk (T&T) (Weatherglass Books)
The Believers, by A.K. Herman (T&T) (A.R. Phillips Press)
Sweetness in the Skin, by Ishi Robinson (Jamaica) (HarperCollins/PenguinUKbooks)
The books shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Nonfiction are highly diverse in topic and approach, tackling autobiography, family memoir, history, and cultural analysis:
Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, by Dionne Brand (T&T/Canada) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
We’re Alone, by Edwidge Danticat (Haiti/US) (Graywolf Press)
Resistance Refuge Revival: The Indigenous Kalinagos of Dominica, by Lennox Honychurch (Dominica) (Papillote Press)
Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond, by Oneka LaBennett (Guyana/US) (NYU Press)
Mother Archive: A Dominican Family Memoir, by Erika Morillo (Dominican Republic) (University of Iowa Press)
The OCM Bocas Prize, now in its 15th consecutive year, is the most coveted award for Caribbean books — the prize all Caribbean writers hope to win. Annually, it recognises books in three genre categories — poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction — published by authors of Caribbean birth or citizenship in the preceding year.
The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is sponsored by One Caribbean Media Limited and administered by the Bocas Lit Fest.
For more about the shortlisted books, visit https://bocaslitfest.com/awards/ocm/
For more information, see https://www.bocaslitfest.com/