“All Together Now” remains the focus of this year’s Bocas Couva festival, on Saturday 18 July at Lisas Gardens Community Centre. Bocas Couva 2026, the first in a series of four one-day community literary and cultural festivals across Trinidad and Tobago, is presented by Methanex Trinidad.
Commenting on the inclusive ambitions of the upcoming Couva festival, Georgia Popplewell, Bocas Lit Fest’s Managing Director, said, “Bocas’ annual festival in May has long featured writers and performers from all over Trinidad and Tobago — but in Port of Spain. With these four community festivals, we’re aiming to celebrate the home-grown creativity of specific parts of the country in those areas themselves, offering writers and performers from those communities a platform, and audiences a chance to experience their work in a different — and more intimate — context from the larger festival.”
Award-winning and celebrated local authors will share from their bodies of published work at Bocas Couva, including Kevin Jared Hosein, winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, for his novel Hungry Ghosts. Vashti Bowlah, whose ties to Couva are rooted in her childhood and upbringing, as reflected in her two books Sugarcane Valley and Under the Peepal Tree, will also appear on the programme. Couva-based Tricia Chin, self-published author of numerous works including Tabanca and Other Stories and For the Dead, will read alongside Bowlah. They will be joined by Portia Subran, winner of the 2019 Cecile de Jongh Literary Prize from the Caribbean Writer, and the 2016 Small Axe Literary Short Story Competition.
A special literary tour, showcasing classic and contemporary authors and books will launch at Bocas Couva, and work its way through all four community festivals. “The benefits of this virtual literary tour are both immersive and immense,” said Shivanee Ramlochan, Bocas Lit Fest’s Festival and Programme Manager, adding that “through attendance, audience members can embed themselves in the landscapes, histories and specific, localized cultures of the very environments where beloved books had their beginnings, from Walcott to Hosein, and beyond.” Bocas Couva’s literary tour will feature readings from Derek Walcott’s “The Saddhu of Couva”, Harold Sonny Ladoo’s No Pain Like This Body, Kevin Jared Hosein’s Hungry Ghosts, and Justin Haynes’ Ibis, this year’s winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction.
Children’s programming will similarly be front and centre at Lisas Gardens Community Centre. A panoply of storytellers will assemble to regale youngsters and their guardians with tales, including Jody White, Katrina Khan-Roberts and Milan Romany, Miranda Dookran, Shalon Kasha Joseph, and Salim Rampersad, C. Pinnie, Crystal-Marie Sealey, and Michelle Govia. Additionally, a puppet storytelling workshop and a showcase of readings from the Bocas Children’s Storytelling Caravan will further enliven events.
Bocas Couva’s Spoken Word Competition, drawing on the talents of secondary school-aged youth in Couva and its environs, will form an essential component of the one-day festival. Participating youth will have the opportunity to workshop their pieces on the very day, in advance of their presentations, during a teaching session led by multidisciplinary artist and former multiple National Poetry Slam finalist, Javaughn Forde.
Everyone’s voice is essential in community: this is the foregrounding motivation of the one-day festival powered by Methanex Trinidad. In this spirit, Stand and Deliver, Bocas’ popular open mic series, will journey to Bocas Couva, offering writers of all genres, ages, and skill levels the chance to share their work before an encouraging live audience.
All are invited to Bocas Couva 2026 on Saturday 18 July, at Lisas Gardens Community Centre. Attendance is free and open to the public.
