Book Bulletin
Bocas Book Bulletin: November 2020
A monthly roundup of Caribbean literary news, curated by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest and published in the Sunday Express.
New Releases
The third book of fiction by Trinidadian Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, Stick No Bills (Peepal Tree Press) is a collection of twenty-two short stories which elegantly and artfully explore personal and family histories, pleasure and loss, and the slippery border zone between memory and invention. A sense of the passage of time, and its tolls, is delicately balanced with an awareness of what endures in human relationships.
Described as “sun and horizon, the bridge between light and darkness, Jouvay and Las Lap,” City Twilight (Anaphora Literary Press), the third book of poems by Trinidadian Dawad Philip, offers narrative vignettes in verse that reflect on the poet’s various journeys — physical, emotional, and imaginative, with a selection of poems tackling the COVID-burdened world of 2020.
Set in 1760, Cane Warriors (Black Sheep), the latest young adult novel by Alex Wheatle, is a fictional account of a key but often overlooked event in Jamaican history: Tacky’s Rebellion, a major revolt by enslaved Africans, planned via an island-wide conspiracy. In Wheatle’s narrative, a fourteen-year-old named Moa is caught up in the growing revolt, driven by a fierce desire for freedom and self-determination.
Awards & Prizes
The novel A Tall History of Sugar by Jamaican Curdella Forbes is the winner of the 2020 Hurston/Wright Foundation Fiction Award. Named for the late writers Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, the awards recognise “literary excellence by Black writers from the United States and around the world.” A Tall History of Sugar was previously shortlisted for the 2020 OCM Bocas Prize in the fiction category.
In the 2020 Forward Prizes for Poetry, Best Single Poem was awarded to Malika Booker, a British writer with Guyanese and Grenadian roots. Her winning poem, “The Little Miracles”, describes her mother’s stroke — according to the judges, it “gives an uncompromising picture of the process of care and recovery: its fears, its effect on sibling relationships, its moments of false hope, its triumphs and gratitudes.”
Barbados-based Jamaican writer Sharma Taylor is the winner of the 2020 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize in the fiction category, for the short story “How You Make Jamaican Coconut Oil.” The prize “champions new writers, with no limits on age, gender, nationality, or background,” and is organised by the UK-based literary journal Wasafiri. Taylor was previously the winner of the 2019 Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize, announced at the 2019 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
The shortlist for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious award for fiction, includes the novel Polar Vortex by Trinidadian-Canadian Shani Mootoo. The winner will be announced on 9 November. This is the author’s third time on the Giller Prize shortlist.
The Mermaid of Black Conch, a novel by Trinidadian-British writer Monique Roffey, has been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. Established in 2013 by Goldsmiths, University of London, the prize seeks “to reward fiction that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.” The winner will be announced on 11 November.
The 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the region’s most important literary award, is now open for submissions. Books may be entered in three genre categories — poetry, fiction, and non-fiction — and must be written by an author of Caribbean birth or citizenship and published in the calendar year 2020, among other requirements. For details, visit www.bocaslitfest.com/2021/awards/ocm-bocas-prize-entry.
Caribbean Bestsellers
Independent bookshop Paper Based (paperbased.org) shares their top-selling Caribbean titles for the past month:
- Love After Love, by Ingrid Persaud
- One Year of Ugly, by Caroline Mackenzie
- The Mermaid of Black Conch, by Monique Roffey
- Golden Child, by Claire Adam
- The Undiscovered Country, by Andre Bagoo
Other News
The third season of Bios & Bookmarks, a weekly literary interview series presented by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, debuts today. Livestreamed via Facebook and hosted by poet Shivanee Ramlochan, the series features Caribbean and diaspora authors of recent books reading and discussing their work. The featured writer for the season three premiere is Canada-based St. Lucian writer Canisia Lubrin, author of The Dyzgraphxst. Bios & Bookmarks livestreams at facebook.com/bocaslitfest on Sunday afternoons.
Carifesta XV, to be hosted by Antigua and Barbuda and originally scheduled for August 2021, has been pushed back by a year. The new dates are 11 to 21 August, 2022. In recent years, the regional arts festival — which includes literature among its offerings — has run on a biennial schedule, but the uncertainties created by the COVID-19 pandemic have forced this postponement.