Book Bulletin
Bocas Book Bulletin: August 2020
A monthly roundup of Caribbean literary news, curated by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest and published in the Sunday Express.
New Releases
One Year of Ugly (The Borough Press), the debut novel by Trinidadian Caroline Mackenzie, is a sly, zippy dark comedy set in contemporary T&T, combining elements of romance and crime fiction. The extended Palacios family, Venezuelan migrants living comfortably though illegally in Trinidad, become entangled with a local crime boss named Ugly, following the death of their larger-than-life Aunt Celia. As the Palacios clan negotiate their tricky situation, daughter Yola — herself a budding fiction writer — finds herself drawn to Ugly’s mysterious right-hand man, as secrets begin to spill.
In her debut book of colour (Essay Press), US-based Trinidadian-Ghanaian writer Katherine Agyemaa Agard offers “an experimental essay about colour, hybridity, and art-making.” Investigating race and sexuality though a hybrid identity, of colour is described as both memoir and manifesto, an exploration of self that comes to no easy conclusions.
Newly translated from the Spanish, the novel My Favourite Girlfriend Was a French Bulldog (McSweeney’s) by Cuban writer Legna Rodríguez Iglesias is a novel in the form of fifteen linked stories which “creates an unsparing multigenerational portrait” of Cuba. Touching on issues of family, feminism, and political and sexual identity, the novel turns a classic story of migration into a fresh and deeply original exploration of the self in the world.
Awards & Prizes
One of the best-known Jamaican writers and performers of his generation, often considered the “father of dub poetry”, Linton Kwesi Johnson was announced as winner of the 2020 PEN Pinter Prize on 7 July, by the organisation English PEN, which defends freedom of expression and celebrates literature. Named for the late British writer (and Nobel laureate) Harold Pinter, the prize is awarded annually to a writer of outstanding literary merit resident in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Pinter’s Nobel Prize in Literature speech, casts an “unflinching, unswerving” gaze upon the world and shows a “fierce intellectual determination … to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.” Explaining the choice of Johnson as 2020 winner, one of the judges remarked: “I can think of few people who more clearly embody the power of poetry to enact change. Few post-war figures have been as unwaveringly committed to political expression in their work. He has been fearless, and relentless.”
Two Jamaica-born writers have been nominated for the 2020 Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards in the fiction category: Curdella Forbes, for her novel A Tall History of Sugar, and Nicole Dennis-Benn, for Patsy. The awards, named jointly for writers Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, are given annually for books in several genres, to honour Black writers from the United States and around the world. Winners will be announced at a ceremony in October.
These Ghosts Are Family, the debut novel by Jamaica-born Maisy Card, has been longlisted for the 2020 Centre for Fiction First Novel Prize. First awarded in 2006, the award recognises the best debut novel published each year in the United States. The winner will be announced in December.
The 2021 Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize opened for entries on 23 July. This annual award allows an emerging Caribbean writer living and working in the Anglophone Caribbean to devote time to advancing or finishing a literary work, with support from an established writer as a mentor. The Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize is sponsored by philanthropist Dr. Kongshiek Achong Low and administered by the Bocas Lit Fest and the literary charitable trust Arvon. It is open for submissions until 30 September, 2020. Full details on eligibility and the submissions process are available at the Bocas Lit Fest website: www.bocaslitfest.com/2021/awards/the-johnson-and-amoy-achong-caribbean-writers-prize.
Other News
The 2020 NGC Bocas Lit Fest, originally scheduled for May and then postponed to 18 to 20 September in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has announced that it will stage an entirely virtual programme, streamed via the festival website and social media platforms, freely accessible to viewers around the world. Programme details will be announced in late August, and events will include readings and discussions around new and recently published books, with a special focus on Caribbean speculative fiction and the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Black Power Revolution.
The 2020 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival has also announced a fully virtual online programme, scheduled to run from 10 to 13 September. Events are free but require pre-registration, with limited capacity. Organisers have announced that the 2020 event will be dedicated to the memory of the late writers Paule Marshall and Kamau Brathwaite, with the theme “Nation Language: Prose . Poetry . Sound.