06/04/2025
Congrats 🎉🙌 to the Genre Category winners of the One Caribbean Media Limited Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.
Bocas Lit Fest
It is with great excitement that we announce that books by celebrated authors from T&T and Haiti have won the poetry, fiction, and nonfiction categories of the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media Limited.
The genre category winners are:
🌟Poetry:
Polkadot Wounds, by Anthony Vahni Capildeo (T&T/Scotland) (Carcanet Press)
🌟Fiction:
Village Weavers, by Myriam J. A. Chancy (Haiti) (Tin House)
🌟Nonfiction:
Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, by Dionne Brand (T&T/Canada) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Writers Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Myriam J.A. Chancy, and Dionne Brand will now vie for the overall prize, to be announced on Saturday 3 May at the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest.
Now in its 15th year, the annual OCM Bocas Prize recognises the best books published by authors of Caribbean birth or citizenship, and is considered the region’s most distinguished literary award.
The three chairs of the genre panels — Alexis Pauline Gumbs (poetry), Denise deCaires Narain (fiction), and Rinaldo Scott (nonfiction) — now make up the final jury, joined by chief judge Erna Brodber, the celebrated Jamaican author whose many honours include a Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, a Musgrave Gold Medal from the Institute of Jamaica, and a Prince Claus Award.
The overall winner of the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize will be chosen from the three genre winners and awarded US$10,000. The other category winners will each receive US$3,000.
For more about the 2025 genre winners and to read what the judges had to say about each book, visit: https://bocaslitfest.com/awards/ocm/
One Caribbean Media Limited is the owner of the Trinidad Express Newspapers, CCN TV6: Trinidad and Tobago, and the OCM radio network.
The Festival will run from Thursday 1 to Sunday 4 May, at the National Library and Old Fire Station and other venues around Port of Spain.