Arnold Rampersad, chair of the judges of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, has been awarded one of the highest national awards in the United States, the National Humanities Medal, by President Barack Obama.

In a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday 2 March, 2011, Rampersad shook hands with Obama and received his medal, which “honours individuals whose work has deepened the nation’s understanding of the humanities and the human condition.” He was one of ten distinguished awardees. Rampersad remarked: “it’s always special to receive a national honour, and it’s especially gratifying to receive an honour involving the humanities from someone as well read, as devoted to books, both as a reader and a writer, as is President Obama.”

Arnold Rampersad is Sara Hart Kimball Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the two-volume definitive Life of Langston Hughes; Days of Grace: A Memoir (co-authored with Arthur Ashe), and the masterful Ralph Ellison: A Biography, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography, and he served for two years on the Pulitzer panel of judges, the experience of which he brings to his chairmanship of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

Beginning his working career in teaching at Fatima College in Port of Spain, he returned to academia, after spells in broadcasting, to earn a PhD in English at Harvard University. Since then, he has taught at such leading universities as Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, and Stanford. He won a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in 1991, and in 2009 the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, awarded him an honorary doctorate.

The 2011 OCM Bocas Prize will be presented on 30 April at the inaugural Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain. Rampersad will read from his Ellison biography at the festival and participate in other events in the programme.

Ten writers representing six different countries are in the running for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media. The Prize longlist, announced by the judges on 28 February, 2011, includes three books of poetry, four of fiction, and three of non-fiction. The writers range from Nobel laureates to debut authors.

In the poetry category, the three contenders are all extended meditations on themes of memory, loss, and hope. Kamau Brathwaite’s elegiac and typographically complex Elegguas joins Kei Miller’s uplifting collection A Light Song of Light and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott’s White Egrets, which muses over age and mortality.

Three novels and a book of short fiction vie in the fiction category. Myriam Chancy’s The Loneliness of Angels, steeped in Haitian history, charts human connections across gulfs of time and space. Karen Lord’s Redemption in Indigo, inspired by a Senegalese folktale, plays with the conventions of traditional storytelling. Rabindranath Maharaj’s The Amazing Absorbing Boy offers a fresh take on the Caribbean migrant experience. And Tiphanie Yanique’s How to Escape a Leper Colony lyrically explores its characters’ emotional intimacy.

The non-fiction category brings together Beauty and Sadness, a collection of literary criticism and memoir by Andre Alexis; Edwidge Danticat’s Create Dangerously, a series of essays on the role of the “immigrant artist”; and Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul’s travel narrative The Masque of Africa, which investigates the survival of indigenous religious beliefs on the continent.

The judges read approximately sixty books entered for the Prize, which will be presented for the first time in 2011. The OCM Bocas Prize is open to books by Caribbean writers published in the previous calendar year, and comes with an award of US$10,000. The winners in the three genre categories will be announced on 28 March, and the Prize will be presented on 30 April, during the first annual Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain.

Further information on the OCM Bocas Prize here.

Since the Bocas Lit Fest and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature were announced last November, the organising team has been hard at work. Now, with just under three months to go until the festival opens, developments are speeding up — we’ll be posting more regular updates here at the Bocas Lit Fest blog and via Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s some news on the OCM Bocas Prize. With the deadline past, all the entered books — fiction, poetry, and non-fiction — have been sent off to our panel of judges. They are busy reading, thinking, scribbling notes, conferring, and working on the longlist of nine books — three from each genre category — scheduled to be announced at the end of February.

We’re very pleased that the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize has attracted entries from Caribbean writers based all over the world. Approximately sixty books have been entered, their authors representing thirteen Caribbean territories. Their imaginative and geographical range demonstrate the healthy diversity of contemporary Caribbean writing, and we don’t envy our judges the task of narrowing the entries down to the longlist — then the shortlist of one book from each category — and then the final winner, which will be announced during the Bocas Lit Fest.

Coming soon: news about the festival programme and invited authors!

The Bocas Lit Fest and OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature have been in the works for months now. And today we finally go public. At just about the same time that this post is being written, Bocas Lit Fest founder and director Marina Salandy-Brown is making an official announcement at the International Conference on Caribbean Literature, taking place today at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine.

We’re thrilled to share the news of the exciting event we’re planning for April next year — the first major literary festival in the southern Caribbean, with international scope, regional focus, and a uniquely Trinidadian and Tobagonian twist. And thrilled all over again to announce the OCM Bocas Prize, a major literary award for Caribbean writers of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. The inaugural OCM Bocas Prize opens for entry on Monday 8 November — see our prize page for more information — and the first winner will be announced during the 2011 Bocas Lit Fest.

There’s lots to do between now and then — and there’ll be lots of news to share. Keep an eye on this blog for the latest updates on both the festival and the prize. And if you’re of the twittering persuasion — you can follow us there too.

From left: Edwidge Danticat, Derek Walcott, and Tiphanie Yanique

A Nobel laureate, a MacArthur “genius” fellow, and a first-time author are finalists for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media.

On 28 March, 2011, the Prize judges announced the winners of the three genre categories, who are now finalists for the overall Prize, which comes with an award of US$10,000.

Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, who was previously given a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” in 2009, is the non-fiction category winner for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize, for her essay collection Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. The judges describe the book as “thoughtful, interesting, and varied in its insights, often moving, and beautifully written, in a passionate yet restrained style.”

St. Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott is the poetry category winner, for his book White Egrets, which has already won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize. The OCM Bocas Prize judges call it “a superb collection . . . that speaks for all of us who live and love and can’t ever take our eyes off the wonder of the world around us.”

The fiction category winner is How to Escape a Leper Colony, the debut short fiction collection by Tiphanie Yanique of the US Virgin Islands. “Extremely touching but never sentimental,” say the judges, “this is a wonderfully engaging gathering of stories by a genuinely gifted writer.”

The overall winner of the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize will be announced on 30 April, during the first annual Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain (28 April to 1 May). The festival schedule includes readings from all three shortlisted books, and Tiphanie Yanique will participate in the programme.

Further information on the OCM Bocas Prize here. See the longlist of ten books here.

From left: Edwidge Danticat, Derek Walcott, and Tiphanie Yanique

A Nobel laureate, a MacArthur “genius” fellow, and a first-time author are finalists for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media.

On 28 March, 2011, the Prize judges announced the winners of the three genre categories, who are now finalists for the overall Prize, which comes with an award of US$10,000.

Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, who was previously given a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” in 2009, is the non-fiction category winner for the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize, for her essay collection Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work. The judges describe the book as “thoughtful, interesting, and varied in its insights, often moving, and beautifully written, in a passionate yet restrained style.”

St. Lucian Nobel laureate Derek Walcott is the poetry category winner, for his book White Egrets, which has already won the prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize. The OCM Bocas Prize judges call it “a superb collection . . . that speaks for all of us who live and love and can’t ever take our eyes off the wonder of the world around us.”

The fiction category winner is How to Escape a Leper Colony, the debut short fiction collection by Tiphanie Yanique of the US Virgin Islands. “Extremely touching but never sentimental,” say the judges, “this is a wonderfully engaging gathering of stories by a genuinely gifted writer.”

The overall winner of the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize will be announced on 30 April, during the first annual Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain (28 April to 1 May). The festival schedule includes readings from all three shortlisted books, and Tiphanie Yanique will participate in the programme.

Further information on the OCM Bocas Prize here. See the longlist of ten books here.