The 2012 NGC Bocas Lit Fest programme will overflow with readings, discussions, performances, workshops, and more. Stay tuned for details....



Our inaugural 2011 programme featured over fifty events spread over four days. Highlights included:

• The announcement of the 2011 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the first major regional award recognising Caribbean writers of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction.

• A celebration of the 25th anniversary of Peepal Tree Press, the leading publisher of Caribbean fiction and poetry, featuring founder Jeremy Poynting, the launch of new Peepal Tree titles, and readings by Peepal Tree authors.

• A Friday-night “poetry lime” in St. James — unbuttoned and uninhibited!

• Tributes to Trinidadian Keith Smith and Martiniquan Édouard Glissant, two beloved and recently deceased writers — one a master of the newspaper column, the other a champion of the Caribbean’s unique hybrid culture.

• The Bocas Debate: first in an annual series of a high-level discussions of burning public-interest topics. This year’s subject: “Press vs. Government: the freedom to print what?”

• “The lives of others”, a conversation about the privileges and perils of biography, featuring the prizewinning biographers of V.S. Naipaul, Ralph Ellison, and Frank Collymore.

Plus readings by celebrated Caribbean authors, discussion panels, workshops, performance poetry and open mic sessions, film screenings, music, a full programme of events for children, and more.