This year promises another bumper crop of new Caribbean books, from eagerly awaited debuts to career-summing collections from some of the region’s most iconic authors. Here are some upcoming 2022 highlights in Caribbean publishing, to mark in your reading diary (dates are subject to changes in publishers’ schedules).

January

Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems (Carcanet Press), a new volume by Jamaican Poet Laureate Olive Senior, brings together her four previous books of poems — Talking of Trees, Gardening in the Tropics, Over the Roofs of the World, and Shell — with a sequence of new work.

One Day, One Day, Congotay (Peepal Tree Press), the long-awaited third novel by Merle Hodge, a novel set in the pre-Independence period in Cayeri, a fictional Caribbean island inspired by Trinidad. This “richly womanist” story delves into community and struggle, and relationships that offer new ways to think about family.

Velorio (HarperVia), the debut novel by Xavier Navarro Aquino, is set in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, as the survivors of the disaster grapple with human violence, authoritarian abuse, and the corruptions of power.

February

When We Were Birds (Hamish Hamilton, UK; Doubleday, US), perhaps the most hotly anticipated Caribbean debut of 2022, by UK-based Trinidadian Ayanna Lloyd Banwo — a “mesmerising” story of love, family, and destiny set in the fictional city of Port Angeles.

Moon Witch, Spider King (Riverhead), the second volume in the Dark Star Trilogy by Jamaican Marlon James, gives an alternative account of the events told in its predecessor Black Leopard, Red Wolf, this time from the perspective of Sogolon the Moon Witch.

We Must Learn to Sit Together and Talk About a Little Culture: Decolonising Essays, 1967–1984 (Peepal Tree Press), an urgently needed collection of writings by the Jamaican cultural theorist Sylvia Wynter. A leading contemporary Caribbean thinker, whose influence is newly resurgent in the academy, Wynter ranges from literary criticism to Spanish Jamaican history, C.L.R. James to Bob Marley, and the nature of humanism itself.

Black American Refugee: Escaping the Narcissism of the American Dream (Viking), a deeply introspective memoir by T&T-born, US-raised Tiffanie Drayton, returning to Tobago as an adult. The author uses personal experiences to investigate the toll of systemic racism and what the “American Dream” might actually mean for Black people.

March

Living on Islands Not Found on Maps (FlowerSong Press), a new collection of poems by Luivette Resto, born in Puerto Rico and based in the US. Childhood, motherhood, memory, desire, love, and revolution collide in these poems that combine candour with lyrical craft.

April

The Mystic Masseur’s Wife (Peepal Tree Press), the debut novel by Trinidadian Vijay Maharaj, is an “inventive, richly humorous” re-writing of V.S. Naipaul’s early novel The Mystic Masseur, focused on Leila, the wife of Naipaul’s protagonist, finally giving her side of the story.

A Revolutionary for Our Time: The Walter Rodney Story (Haymarket), by Leo Zeilig, the first book-length study of the groundbreaking Guyanese scholar and activist, explores Rodney’s life and research, thought and revolutionary action, and his significance for today’s political struggles.

Border Zone (Bloodaxe), the ninth poetry collection by Guyana-born John Agard, ranges across centuries and oceans. It includes a verse love story about a Barbadian photographer and a Welsh librarian, a Cassanova-inspired sequence of sonnets, poems exploring the calypso form, and poems tackling COVID lockdown.

May

A Fierce Green Place: New and Selected Poems (New Directions), a collection of “rebellious, innovative” poems by Canada-based Jamaican Pamela Mordecai, spans her three-decade literary career, covering subjects as diverse as Biblical and colonial history, family tragedy, and the defiance of vernacular Caribbean culture.

Neruda on the Park (Ballantyne), the debut novel by Dominican-American Cleyvis Natera tells the story of the Dominican-American Guerrero family grappling with issues of community and ambition, and pulling in plotlines concerning both romance and neighbourhood gentrification in New York City.

June

The Drowned Forest (Peepal Tree Press), a novel by Bermudan Angela Barry, tackles culture clashes and climate change in the evolving social order of Bermuda, told through the vividly realised voices of five different characters.

July

What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You (Virago), the debut novel by Jamaican Sharma Taylor, begins with an eighteen-year-old Jamaican woman giving her newborn son up for adoption — setting off a decades-long story of family, identity, and inheritance, vividly set in contemporary Jamaica.

Love the Dark Days (Peepal Tree Press), a “fearless” memoir by India-born, Trinidad-based journalist Ira Mathur, reflects on family history, the struggle to adapt to a new life in the multi-ethnic Caribbean, the author’s development as a journalist, and her relationship with Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott.

August

Devotion (Bloomsbury), a novel by Trinidadian Kevin Jared Hosein, winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, is a gripping noir tale set in 1940s Trinidad, investigating the “hellishly intertwined” stories of two families connected by mysterious acts of violence.

The Dreaming (Peepal Tree Press), a short story collection by Trinidadian Andre Bagoo, his first book of fiction after several volumes of poems and a celebrated essay collection. Set mostly in the Port of Spain neighbourhood of Woodbrook, these stories explore the lives and loves of a group of gay men, with wit, psychological insight, and a hint of possible danger.

Song of My Softening (Alice James Books), the debut collection by UK-born, Trinidadian-Nigerian-American Omotara James, explores love and sexuality, friendship and sisterhood through daring, innovative lyrics that “remind us of our physical and sensual selves.”

September

The Stranger Who Was Myself (Peepal Tree Press), a memoir by fiction writer Barbara Jenkins, ranges from her childhood in colonial Trinidad to her university education in Wales and her return to her newly independent home country to make a life and raise a family — all told with “an insider/outsider sharpness of perception.”