Olive Senior, winner of the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, is set to read from her impressive body of work at a gala event, co-hosted by Paper Based Bookshop and the NGC Bocas Lit Fest. An Evening of Wine and Readings with Olive Senior will take place on Saturday, November 26th, at Medulla Art Gallery, Woodbrook.
The Pain Tree, Senior’s newest book of short stories, was awarded the prestigious US$10,000 OCM Bocas Prize on April 30th. Olive Senior is no stranger to Bocas success; her book, Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal, claimed the 2015 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction. In her home country of Jamaica, Senior has been awarded the Gold Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica, the highest arts award the country possesses.
Conceived to honour and celebrate the lifetime legacy of Senior, whose books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children’s writing have delighted generations, the event will also highlight Senior’s influence on fellow writers. Barbara Jenkins, winner of the 2014 Guyana Prize for Literature (Caribbean) and Bocas’ Hollick Arvon Prize; Andre Bagoo, longlisted for the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize; and Ayanna Gillian Lloyd, second-place winner of the 2016 Small Axe Literary Competition, will share their creative connections to Senior’s vast cache of work.
Joan Dayal, owner of Paper Based Bookshop, and Marina Salandy-Brown, founder of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, expressed their mutual pride at the significance of this collaborative event, noting that it will mark another valuable bridge between a much-beloved writer and her reading public.
Tickets for An Evening of Wine and Readings with Olive Senior are priced at $120, and include the cost of wine and refreshments. Bookings can be made at Paper Based Bookshop, 10 am – 6pm (Mon-Fri) and 10 am – 4 pm (Saturday), or by telephone: 625-3197 / 734-6091.
