A monthly roundup of news about Caribbean books and writers, presented by the Bocas Lit Fest.
Welcome to the latest installment of the Bocas Book Bulletin, a monthly roundup of Caribbean literary news, curated by the Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival, and published in the Sunday Express.
New Releases
The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican memoir of plants and dreams (Hutchinson Heinemann) by Jason Allen-Paisant narrates the author’s personal history with the green landscapes of his homeland Jamaica, enmeshed in the wisdoms of his family’s maternal line. In searching conversations with his valuable confidants, and journeys by vehicle and on foot into some of the most jungled, verdant parts of the parishes he knows best, Allen-Paisant works through myth, memory, and map-making as crucial parts of his narrative. The stark, often confronting differences between the Jamaican and British landscapes are explored with poetic conviction.
Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis (Penguin Random House) by Tao Leigh Goffe explores the malign influence of European-driven colonization on the Caribbean, and its direct effects on our present climate catastrophe. Combining history with reportage, Dark Laboratory maps the origins of this predatory extraction to Columbus’ 1492 advent to Guanahaní in the Bahamas, which he labelled San Salvador. Acts of fiscal profiteering, at the risk of Black and Brown bodies, are explored throughout the text, which culminates in a radical vision for people of the global majority.
I Sing to the Greenhearts (Seren Books) by Maggie Harris presents poems of place, inflected by the complex passages of history. Steeped in experience, full of speakers who remain undaunted despite time’s ravages, the collection travels from Guyana to Wales, gathering potent symbolisms of our natural and man-made worlds as they journey. Attuned to the pressures of environmental devastation, wary of the spectres raised by insalubrious social media use, I Sing to the Greenhearts explores pathways towards a deeply thinking, feeling planet – one in which we aren’t victims to our fears or flickering computer screens.
A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl (Zibby Books) by Nanda Reddy straddles Miami and Guyana in a plotline that exhumes the ghosts of the past, revealing how they impact the protagonist attempting to secure a safer future. Maya, living a comfortable existence in Atlanta, Georgia, is confronted with the self she used to be, when a letter from Guyana arrives for her— addressed to a name she no longer carries. Confronting layered issues of migration and trauma, A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl positions its central character as a redemptive force.
He Burns by the River (Augustine Books) by Khalia Moreau is a young adult folkloric adventure set in Trinidad’s 1960s, retelling the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel through two youths coming of age in a fraught time. The bond between Roran and his older, fair-skinned brother Danny are beset by ambition
and colourism: this sibling struggle becomes even more complicated when Danny falls ill to a mysterious malady. The villagers of Sapo, where both boys live, call it Obeah: can Roran reveal what lies beneath their fearful whispers? Moreau’s postcolonial characters are lifelike, confidently-hewn.
Three authors compete for 2025 OCM Bocas Prize
Books by already celebrated authors from Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti have won the poetry, fiction, and non-fiction categories of the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media, owner of the Trinidad and Tobago Express newspaper, TV6, and the OCM radio network. Polkadot Wounds (Carcanet), the ninth full-length book by Trinidadian-Scottish Anthony Vahni Capildeo, is the winner of the poetry category. In the fiction category, the winner is the novel Village Weavers (Tin House), by Haitian-Canadian-American Myriam J.A. Chancy. The third winner, in the nonfiction category, is Salvage: Readings from the Wreck (Knopf Canada/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Trinidadian-Canadian Dionne Brand — who previously won the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction with her novel Theory.
Writers Anthony Vahni Capildeo, Myriam J.A. Chancy, and Dionne Brand will now vie for the overall Prize, to be announced at the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest. Now in its 15th year, the annual OCM Bocas Prize recognises the best books published by authors of Caribbean birth or citizenship, and is considered the region’s most distinguished literary award.
Fourteen finalists vie for 2025 First Citizens National Poetry Slam
The First Citizens National Poetry Slam—the Caribbean’s premier spoken word championship—has officially announced the fourteen finalists who will face reigning champion Shakira Burton at the Grand Slam Finals on Sunday 4 May at the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA).
The finalists — Alexandra Stewart, Alicia Psyche Haynes, Camryn Bruno, Deneka Thomas, Derron Sandy, Javaughn Forde, Keeron Isaac, Kevin Soyer, Michael Logie, Renaldo Briggs, Rochelle Rawlins, Seth Sylvester, Shakir Gray, Shaquille Warren – represent a mixture of past winners and finalists alongside newcomers to the First Citizens National Poetry Slam stage. The Slam Grand Finale is the signature closing event of the annual Bocas Lit Fest, which runs from 1–4 May 2025.
Tickets are priced at $200 and can be purchased online at bocaslitfest.com/events/2025-first-citzens-national-poetry-slam-finals.
Caribbean Bestsellers
Independent bookshop Paper Based (Instagram: @paperbasedbookshop) shares its top-selling Caribbean titles for the past month:
1. Unstitching Silence, edited by Shivanee Ramlochan and Lucy Evans
2. About Kingston, by Amílcar Peter Sanatan
3. Yellow is Not for Girls Like Me, by June Aming
4. The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, by Ingrid Persaud
5. The Village of One, by Richard Charan
