The recipient of the 2025 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award is The Journal of West Indian Literature (JWIL), first published in 1986, in recognition of its indelible role as the most significant scholarly journal dedicated to the field of Caribbean literature — a vital forum for critic and creative debate, and an archive of research and thought including almost every scholar of note working on Anglophone Caribbean literature over three generations.
All the previous winners of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award have been individuals, rightly honoured for their singular careers. This year’s award breaks new ground, recognising an institution that is also a collective. As we know from the history of the Bocas Lit Fest itself, much pioneering work in the creative field, as in scholarship, is the product of collective and collaborative effort. As we mark the 15th year of the Festival, it is an appropriate moment to expand the scope of the Swanzy Award in this way, and set a new precedent.
JWIL, from its beginning, has been a collaboration among the campuses of The University of the West Indies, rooted in efforts, dating back to the 1970s, to firmly establish and validate West Indian literature as a scholarly field. At the same time, the journal has always had an international remit, as befits a discipline rooted in a particular geography and history but global in its concerns, ambitions, and influence.
Over the decades — first in print and, since 2015, as an entirely online journal — JWIL has published approximately 1,000 pieces: scholarly articles, book reviews, and interviews, as well as occasional creative works. Contributors have ranged from eminent senior scholars — some of them rightly known as parents of West Indian literary studies — to early-career researchers, and indeed publishing a peer-reviewed piece in JWIL has long been considered a rite of passage within the discipline. In recent years, the journal has worked to expand its reach beyond academia to address broader literary audiences, including innovations such as regular social media residencies which allow scholars to share ideas and reflections on their current research, or on a key literary figure.
In the editorial note opening JWIL Vol. 1, No. 1 — published in October 1986 — original editor in chief Mark McWatt explained the initial motivation for founding the journal, as a forum for publishing the increasing number of papers presented annually at another institution, the West Indian Literature Conference. As McWatt plainly wrote: “It was felt that, like other national and regional literatures, West Indian literature deserved its own scholarly journal.” McWatt, long based at The UWI’s Cave Hill campus, was indefatigably assisted from the beginning by Victor Chang of Mona campus, who eventually succeeded him in the formal role of editor in chief. Chang was succeeded in turn by Evelyn O’Callaghan, and the current co-editors in chief are Michael Bucknor and Lisa Outar. These five have successively headed JWIL’s masthead over the years, and deserve particular credit and praise for their vision and leadership. But the Bocas Swanzy Award also encompasses, and is shared by, the dozens of scholars and writers who have served on the editorial board; as editorial advisors; as section editors; as editors of special themed issues; and for that matter as peer reviewers, contributing thousands of hours of their time to the essential and entirely anonymous intellectual labour of evaluating and helping improve the work and thought of their colleagues.
As our region’s literary canon expands, as more and more writers add their voices and ideas to the creative ferment, as Caribbean literature shoots off into ever more diverse and unexpected directions, the need for critical and scholarly analysis and interpretation will be ever more urgent. The institution and the community of JWIL will continue to be crucial, as a forum for debate and an instrument of dissemination — the journal of record, in many ways, for the nation of the imagination that is Caribbean literature.
2024
The 2024 recipient of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award is Guyana-born, UK-based Arif Ali, founder of Hansib Publications, for his role in preserving generations of Caribbean culture, thought, and art in print — recognising his tenacious dedication to giving Caribbean and Black British voices a creative platform when they were denied by countless others.
Arif Ali entered the arena of publishing without any formal training. The world of 1950s England, which Ali faced as a migrant from then–British Guiana, did not predispose itself to the basic circulation, far less adulation, of West Indian stories. Ali, who sold his greengrocer’s shop in north London to fund the creation of Hansib Publications, stood against the careless and wilful erasure of Caribbean perspectives. At Hansib, he vowed, such stories would not only be afforded space, they would be allowed to shine.
Born in the village of Danielstown in British Guiana in 1935, Ali arrived in London in 1957 intending to launch his studies in economics. Marriage and other practical pathways presented themselves before the publishing bug bit. Ali used a Gestetner printing machine to reproduce articles from the various Caribbean newspapers he brought into his greengrocer’s shop. This hands-on, frugal venture, which he dubbed The Westindian, sparked into a success, spurring him on to found Hansib Publications in 1970, which he named for his parents Haniff and Sibby.
Hansib’s first book publication, Westindians in Britain (1973), was edited by Ali himself. It functioned as a “Who’s Who” of the migrant communities whose efforts and achievements received little to no fanfare elsewhere. The publication proved so popular that several editions were issued, up to a fifth collection in 1982. As decades progressed, Hansib’s attention turned more and more to full-length book publication in every conceivable genre. Now over fifty years old and going strong, Hansib Publications boasts a catalogue of over 300 titles, and remains open for submissions.
Arif Ali, retired from the day-to-day business of his publishing house, remains indomitably at the centre of its mission: to make publishing accessible, educational, and within reach to Caribbean citizens at home and in the wider diaspora.
2023
The 2023 recipient of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award is Professor Emerita Sandra Pouchet Paquet, a Trinidad-born, US-based Caribbeanist scholar who spent much of her career at the University of Miami — in recognition of her pioneering contributions to the fields of academia, literature, and cultural studies.
One of the first Caribbeanist scholars at a US university, Pouchet Paquet entered a field that was in flux, and committed herself to its transformation. In the 1990s, in addition to educating and mentoring students at the undergraduate and graduate levels, Pouchet Paquet directed the University of Miami’s Caribbean Writers Summer Institute, an initiative that shaped the careers of a generation of authors who soon became leading figures in Caribbean literature.
With her founding in 2003 of Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, Pouchet Paquet established an early born-digital publication that would swiftly be regarded as a rich repository for peer-reviewed scholarship of both academic and creative foundations.
Born in Trinidad, Sandra Pouchet Paquet pursued an undergraduate degree at Manhattanville College, New York (1967), followed by an MA and PhD in English at the University of Connecticut (1971, 1976). After a transformational three-year period of teaching at the University of the West Indies, Mona (1974–77), Pouchet Paquet took on Assistant Professorships at the Universities of Hartford and Pennsylvania before her developmental journey with the University of Miami began. Her advocacy for the study, inclusion and interweaving of Caribbean scholarship into the wider academic community characterised her pedagogy at its earliest levels, and strengthened upon each appointment.
Powerful and generative connections with Derek Walcott and George Lamming would keenly impact Pouchet Paquet’s career and its directions. Crediting Lamming with being her first true educator in Caribbean literature, Pouchet Paquet’s own critical writings of Lamming’s work have been prolific, sustained, and vigorous: her book The Novels of George Lamming (Heinemann, 1980) remains a seminal text. Her other full-length publications are Caribbean Autobiography: Cultural Identity and Self-Representation (University of Wisconsin Press, 2007) and Music, Memory, Resistance: Calypso and the Caribbean Literary Imagination (Ian Randle Publishers, 2007), co-edited with Patricia Saunders and Stephen Stuempfle. The range of interests across her numerous journal publications is testament to a keenly engaged critical consciousness committed to exploring Caribbean feminisms, Afro-Caribbean studies, and studies of the diaspora, among numerous areas of interest.
About the Award
In 2013, the Bocas Lit Fest inaugurated a new annual lifetime achievement award to recognise service to Caribbean literature by editors, publishers, critics, broadcasters, and others.
The Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters is named for the late BBC World Service radio producer (1915–2004) who took the BBC World Service programme Caribbean Voices, started by Jamaican Una Marson, to new heights, making it a landmark platform for Caribbean writing in the 1940s and 50s. Swanzy commissioned, edited and promoted West Indian writers living at home and broadcast their fiction and poems across the region, helping to advance their writing careers and create the generation of successful West Indian writers of the last century.
The Bocas Lit Fest founded the award to honour and celebrate the contributions of the editors, broadcasters, publishers, critics, and others who have shaped the evolution of Caribbean literature behind the scenes. Recipients are chosen by the Bocas Lit Fest.
In previous years, the Award was presented to a distinguished and diverse line-up of Caribbean literary professionals and advocates: John La Rose and Sarah White of New Beacon Books in 2013; literary critics Kenneth Ramchand and Gordon Rohlehr in 2014; editor and broadcaster Margaret Busby in 2015; publisher Jeremy Poynting of Peepal Tree Press in 2016; bookseller Joan Dayal of Paper Based Bookshop in 2017; editor and scholar Anne Walmsley in 2018; publisher Ian Randle in 2019; scholar and editor Kamau Brathwaite in 2020; literary critics Edward Baugh and Mervyn Morris in 2021; educators and scholars Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge in 2022; literary critic Sandra Pouchet Paquet in 2023; and publisher Arif Ali of Hansib Publications in 2024.
All Awardees
Arif Ali
Publisher
Bocas Henry Swanzy Awards Winner
The 2024 recipient of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award is Arif Ali, a Guyana-born, UK-based publisher and founder of Hansib Publications. Ali is recognised for his groundbreaking contributions to Caribbean literature and culture, having dedicated his career to amplifying Caribbean voices through publishing and ensuring the preservation of the region’s rich history and achievements.
Sandra Pouchet Paquet
Speaker
2023 Bocas Henry Swanzy Awards Winner
The 2023 recipient of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award is Professor Emerita Sandra Pouchet Paquet, a Trinidad-born, US-based Caribbeanist scholar who spent much of her career at the University of Miami — in recognition of her pioneering contributions to the fields of academia, literature, and cultural studies.
Funso Aiyejina
Author
2000 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa) Winner
The 2022 recipients of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters are Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge. They are being recognised for their work over more than two decades as creative writing teachers and mentors, in particular through the influential Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop.
Merle Hodge
Author
2022 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award Winner
The 2022 recipients of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters are Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge. They are being recognised for their work over more than two decades as creative writing teachers and mentors, in particular through the influential Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop.
Edward Baugh
Author
2021 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award Winner
The 2021 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award recipients are Mervyn Morris and Edward Baugh for their instrumental role in decisively establishing a Caribbean school of literary scholarship. They are widely considered pioneers of the study of West Indian literature, over careers that each span half a century.
Mervyn Morris
Author
2021 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award Winner
The 2021 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award recipients are Mervyn Morris and Edward Baugh for their instrumental role in decisively establishing a Caribbean school of literary scholarship. They are widely considered pioneers of the study of West Indian literature, over careers that each span half a century.
Anne Walmsley
Publisher
2018 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award Winner
The 2018 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award was presented to Anne Walmsley, writer, editor, and researcher, the former publisher of Longman Caribbean, editor of the landmark anthologies The Sun’s Eye and Facing the Sea, and historian of the Caribbean Artists’ Movement (CAM).
Margaret Busby
Publisher
2015 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award Winner
The 2015 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award was presented to publisher, editor, and broadcaster Margaret Busby, OBE, co-founder of the publishing house Allison & Busby, in recognition of her decades-long work promoting Caribbean, African, and Black British writers and publishers in the United Kingdom.
Ken Ramchand
Author
2014 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award Winner
The 2014 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award was presented to literary critics Kenneth Ramchand and Gordon Rohlehr, both professors emeriti of the University of the West Indies, in recognition of their role in establishing West Indian literature as an academic discipline, and their groundbreaking critical work on the writings of Caribbean authors.
Gordon Rohlehr
Author
2014 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award Winner
The 2014 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award was presented to literary critics Kenneth Ramchand and Gordon Rohlehr, both professors emeriti of the University of the West Indies, in recognition of their role in establishing West Indian literature as an academic discipline, and their groundbreaking critical work on the writings of Caribbean authors.
Sarah White
Speaker
2013 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award Winner
The 2013 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award was presented to John La Rose (posthumously) and Sarah White of New Beacon Books. Founded in London in 1966, New Beacon is both a pioneering publishing house and a specialist bookshop focusing on writers and writing from the Caribbean. Over the past four decades, New Beacon has published works by writers such as Wilson Harris, Andrew Salkey, Errol Hill, Dennis Scott, Erna Brodber, Mervyn Morris, and numerous others, and the bookshop in Stroud Green, North London is an epicentre of Caribbean literary and intellectual life in the United Kingdom.
