Kyle Hernandez is the 2023 First Citizens National Poetry Slam winner. The popular spoken word championship — with a top prize of TT$50,000, sponsored by First Citizens — took place before a sold-out audience at the Central Bank Auditorium in Port of Spain on Sunday 30 April, 2023. Slam lovers were treated to a high-energy
For the second time in a row, a debut writer from Trinidad and Tobago has won the award for outstanding Caribbean book of the past year. When We Were Birds, the first novel by T&T’s Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, is the winner of the overall 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, which comes with a
Life writing — in books ranging from memoirs to family histories — is set to be a major focus at this year’s NGC Bocas Lit Fest, with readings and discussions featuring a fascinating lineup of T&T authors. A rapidly growing, popular genre with locally based writers, life writing records real-life personal and community stories. A
Books by authors from Trinidad and Tobago have swept the three genre categories of the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Writers Anthony Joseph, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, and Ira Mathur have won the poetry, fiction, and non-fiction categories of the annual Prize, considered the most prestigious award for Caribbean writing, sponsored by One Caribbean
The 2023 NGC Bocas Lit Fest is back from 28 to 30 April, and our lineup includes no fewer than six in-person workshops, on topics ranging from writing fiction, poems, and memoir to preservation of historic documents and fashion psychology. All workshops take place at the National Library in downtown Port of Spain and require
14 poets will challenge Defending Champion Alexandra Stewart at the First Citizens National Poetry Slam Finals on April 30. The announcement, which was made on the First Citizens National Poetry Slam social media on March 28, featured poets ages 16 to 54, and included past winners and several first-time slam entrants. The poets performed before a
After a three-year break due to COVID-19, the NGC Children’s Bocas Lit Fest Storytelling Caravan is back in full force and in the flesh, with the beloved Dragonzilla mascot and professional storytellers who will entertain and inspire the nation’s children at ten locations throughout Trinidad and Tobago. The Storytelling Caravan starts its month-long journey of
“What’s your story?” is the theme and tagline of the 2023 NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual festival of books and writers, which launched its upcoming programme today. Running from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 April, the largest annual literary event in the Anglophone Caribbean — now in its 13th year — returns
The influence of Trinidad-born, US-based Caribbeanist scholar Sandra Pouchet Paquet in shaping decades of intellectual and critical thought is impossible to understate. This year, the Bocas Lit Fest is awarding her the 2023 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters, in recognition of her pioneering contributions to the fields of academia, literature,
All of us on the Bocas Lit Fest team are shocked and deeply saddened by the death of writer Trinidadian writer Jennifer Rahim on 13 March, 2023. Jennifer was a poet, fiction writer, scholar, teacher, mentor, and winner of the 2018 OCM Bocas Prize for her brilliant book Curfew Chronicles. It was a privilege for
