Books by fifteen authors with roots in eight territories have been shortlisted for the 2026 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.
The OCM Bocas Prize, now in its 16th year, is the most coveted award for Caribbean authors. It recognises books in three genre categories — poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction — published by authors of Caribbean birth or citizenship in the preceding year.
The Prize judges have shortlisted five books from each genre, with a total of 15 books competing for the overall award. The authors range from newcomers to established figures, including several past winners of the Prize.
Poetry
Two of the five books shortlisted for the 2026 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry are by debut authors, selected by the judges alongside already established talents.
Heirloom by US-based St. Lucian-Tobagonian Catherine-Esther Cowie explores the entwined histories of four generations of women. “The poems lift the notion of inheritance — social, biological, familial, cultural, and colonial — to the light and ask what is bestowed, what is taken, and what can be refused,” write the judges, describing the debut writer as “a hauntingly sharp and sometimes sweet and sometimes ferocious lyric poet.”
Dante’s Inferno by former Jamaican Poet Laureate Lorna Goodison is a groundbreaking translation of the canonical medieval text into Jamaican English. “A humorous, witty, terror-filled journey through the nine concentric circles of hell … this work re-invigorates Dante’s tale, giving it a refreshing contemporary Caribbean glow-up, while masterfully honouring its ancient roots.”
Canada-based St. Lucian Canisia Lubrin, winner of the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for her book The Dyzgraphxst, returns to the shortlist this year with her latest poetry collection The World After Rain: Anne’s Poem. “The book is a sustained meditation on anticipated grief for the poet’s mother,” say the judges, “packed with slippery evocative and fresh poetic phrases that are somehow, at once, futuristic and nostalgic … creating a hybrid Caribbean poetics that encapsulates its past and projects it into a new future.”
Ground Provisions by US-based Jamaican Shauna M. Morgan is “an accomplished debut collection where we meet healers, black-throated blue warblers, miniature Polly lizards, a mother’s garden, a mother’s crying, a rum-tongued uncle, and a ‘newly dead brother’s face composting in time.’” The judges call Morgan “a mighty poet with true lyric and narrative talent.”
The final shortlisted poetry book is The Boy Kingdom, a bilingual sequence by Cuba-born Achy Obejas. Described by the judges as “diaristic in tone, sometimes violent but often tender … vulnerable and piercing,” these intimate prose poems explore motherhood, childhood, queerness, and all the complications of multidimensional family life.
Fiction
The first of the five books shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction is Tall Is Her Body, by Robert de la Chevotière — born in Dominica, raised partly in Guadeloupe and Bermuda, and currently based in Canada. This sophomore novel, whose title comes from the Indigenous name for the author’s island of birth, is “a sweeping tale steeped in love for the land and the people of Dominica.” The story spans the protagonist Fidel’s lifetime, “his migrations to and away from the people he loves, intertwined with the fate of the banana industry in his homeland.”
“What words can properly convey the magic of this book?” ask the judges of The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive: being dreamity, algoriddims, chants & riffs, the fourth novel by US-based Jamaican Marcia Douglas. Poetic and far-ranging, “as the title indicates, it invites us on an imaginative journey through entwined histories of migration and loss, dreams and destinies.”
Ibis, the debut novel by US-based Trinidadian Justin Haynes, “moves dizzyingly across eras, anchored in a small village in Trinidad and by a young Venezuelan migrant’s desperate search to find her mother … Blending touches of magical realism with Naipaulian humor, Haynes conveys a keen sense of how historical and political forces shape the intimate bonds that define our lives.”
Set in the early 16th century, Paradise Once is the latest historical novel by Canada-based Jamaican Olive Senior — winner of the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for her short fiction collection The Pain Tree. Senior “achieves a remarkable feat of imaginative recreation of the Taíno people,” write the judges, “in this grand tribute to a vibrant society so rarely and tenderly rendered in Caribbean historical and spiritual literature.”
The final book shortlisted in the fiction category is the novel A Different Hurricane by H. Nigel Thomas, the veteran author born in St. Vincent and based in Canada. Called by the judges “a tightly woven narrative of secrets on the verge of exposure,” the book recounts the lives of two men born on a tiny island, friends and secret lovers who must contend with social expectations and prejudices, and “the difficult choices we make for the people and places we love.”
In addition to the five shortlisted titles, the judges singled out two books for honourable mention: the novels A House for Miss Pauline, by Diana McCaulay, and A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl, by Nanda Reddy. The judges, they explain, “found both these books to be page-turners with unforgettable characters whose stories of creative survival linger beyond the bounds of their narrative.”
Nonfiction
The books shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Nonfiction lean in the direction of memoir, often using life stories to explore big questions about history, family, ecological trauma, and grief.
The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican Memoir of Plants and Dreams by UK-based Jamaican Jason Allen-Paisant is a personal and family story as well as “a commitment to reconnect to Coffee Grove as a location of ancestral meaning,” write the judges. “In a world constantly reeling as we confront violent anti-Blackness, Allen-Paisant offers a healing salve, a personal yearning, and an ethical call to find tenderness in plants and the natural world.”
Blending together text and image in innovative forms, A Sense of Arrival by Trinidadian Kevin Adonis Browne — winner of the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for High Mas — is “an assemblage that is both impressive and rousing, both anchored in traditions of Caribbean thought and fresh in its articulation. This work makes a critical contribution to multiple fields — Caribbean studies, Black studies, photography, and literary studies — shifting how we understand and see the story of Caribbeanness.”
In Silence and Resistance: A Memoir of Girlhood in Haiti, Haitian Monique Clesca “deftly weaves her personal journey from girlhood to adulthood alongside the emotional turmoil of domestic violence that shapes the lives of so many Caribbean women, situating this narrative within Haiti’s brutal political history … The vivid prose and emotional range of Clesca’s memoir deliver a personal story that resonates with national and regional significance.”
Described by the judges as “elegantly crafted, and compelling at every turn,” The Snag: A Mother, a Forest, and Wild Grief by Tessa McWatt “articulates, in bold, clear, and searingly beautiful language, how our personal grief is intimately connected to planetary loss … Inviting us to care for each other as trees care for the forest, it imparts rich lessons of hope rooted in the natural world, evoking collective love of life and mutual care.”
The final book shortlisted in the nonfiction category also has the natural world at its core. Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival by US-based Jamaican Maria Pinto “envelops us in the hidden, complex, and beautifully strange world of fungi, thereby charting a new course for Black naturalism and exposing understudied connections that span the Caribbean, the African diaspora, and the globe … The surprising gifts that fungi impart as they sustain our planet become a lyric blueprint for exploring the natural world with fresh eyes.”
In the second stage of judging for the 2026 OCM Bocas Prize, the winners in the three genre categories will be announced on 25 March. These will go on to compete for the overall Prize of US$10,000, to be announced on Saturday 2 May, during the 16th annual Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain.
The 2026 Prize is judged by a panel of distinguished Caribbean and international writers and literary professionals. Raymond Antrobus, British poet of Jamaican ancestry, chairs the poetry panel, joined by US-based Trinidadian poet Lauren K. Alleyne and Jamaican poet Tanya Shirley. The fiction panel is chaired by Jamaican-American literary scholar Kelly Baker Josephs of the University of Miami, alongside Canadian bookseller Anjula Gogia and T&T writer Kevin Jared Hosein. Chairing the nonfiction panel is British literary scholar Alison Donnell, joined by T&T journalist Richard Charan and Guyanese-American scholar Oneka LaBennett.
The overall chair of the 2026 cross-genre judging panel is the eminent British publisher, editor, and writer Margaret Busby, winner of the 2015 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters.
OCM, the JB Fernandes Memorial Trust, and the Ministry of Culture and Community Development are main sponsors of the 2026 Bocas Lit Fest; the festival is also sponsored by the British Council, the Massy Foundation, and The UWI.
The 2026 Bocas Lit Fest will run from Thursday 30 April to Sunday 3 May, at the National Library and Old Fire Station and other venues around Port of Spain.
