Naomi Jackson
Naomi Jackson was born and raised in Brooklyn by West Indian parents. She studied fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded the Maytag Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction to complete her first novel, The Star Side of Bird Hill. Jackson traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an […]
Ken Ramchand
Ken Ramchand, distinguished literary critic, is the author of the seminal study The West Indian Novel and Its Background. He is Professor Emeritus of West Indian literature at the University of West Indies and a former President of the University of Trinidad and Tobago. In 2014, he received the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for his […]
Lynn Joseph
Lynn Joseph is a Trinidadian author of several books for children, including A Wave in Her Pocket, The Mermaid’s Twin Sister, An Island Christmas, Jump Up Time: A Carnival Story, and Coconut Kind of Day, and two Young Adult novels, The Color of My Words and Flowers in the Sky. She was selected as Bermuda’s […]
Lylah Persad
Lylah Persad, writer, director, actor, storyteller, is the Creative and Artistic Director of LP Entertainment Theatre. She is a preschool drama teacher and also hosts workshops for teens and adults in speech articulation and character development. Together with Penelope Spencer, she co-authored the collection Tales from the Forest.Â
Auntie Thea
Auntie Thea (Theodora Ulerie) is a writer and celebrated storyteller. She is the co-ordinator of Baku Productions and is the Founder/Creative Director of Culture House, a facility for developing cultural awareness among young people.
Thelma Perkins
Thelma Perkins, UK born with Trinidadian roots, retired to a life of writing and storytelling in Tobago. She writes and tells stories for children and adults. Her publications include: In Search of Mr McKenzie, The Women’s Press; a story for children, Wishing on a Wooden Spoon, Mantra Publishing and a novel, Roundabouts, Mango Publishing.
Natacha Jones
Natacha Jones has worked in the media industry for over thirty years and been in numerous stage productions and television dramas, hosting several television interviews Her work covers The Caribbean Agricultural Extension Project, MACO Caribbean Living. Natacha has  immersed herself in radio and television production focusing on human interest issues especially those related to women […]
Dara E Healy
Dara E Healy, storyteller and performer, is the founder of The Idakeda Group, dedicated to impacting the lives of vulnerable young people and communities through culture, heritage and the arts. Her work has taken her throughout the country, the region and internationally.
Verna Allette Wilkins
Verna Allette Wilkins, celebrated author of 30 books for young people, with her books featured on the BBC and on the Schools National Curriculum, is the founder of Tamarind Books. Awards include the British Book Industry Decibel Award for Multicultural Publishing and an Honorary Doctor of Letters.
Eintou Pearl Springer
Eintou Pearl Springer is a former Poet Laureate of Port of Spain. In her work with The Idakeda Group she explores social issues using traditional performance forms. Her publications include four collections of poetry for adults, three for children, and God Child, a collection of children’s stories.
Carol Mitchell
St. Kitts-Nevis born Carol Mitchell wears several hats in the literary world. Her debut novel for adults, What Start Bad a Mornin’, was published in September 2023 by Central Avenue Publishing, and her short story collection A Good Haunting is forthcoming in Fall 2026 with Akashic Books. She has also published 19 books for children, three with […]
Kevin Jared Hosein
Kevin Jared Hosein is the author, most recently, of Hungry Ghosts, fiction winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It had also been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He is a two-time winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, regionally in 2015 and overall in 2018. […]
Sufia Giza Amenwahsu
Sufia Giza Amenwahsu, Poet and Historian, is an Ancestrally Inspired Artist of Gullah-Geechee descent. Co-founder of the Riverside Renaissance Writers Group, in California, and an Alumni of Cave Canem South, Writers Workshop. She performs spoken word poetry to music. She’s recorded 2 cds and has published 3 chapbooks.
Summer Edward
Summer Edward is a Gingko Prize longlisted author who writes for children and adults. Her children’s book, The Wonder of the World Leaf (HarperCollins UK/Collins Big Cat), was published on April 1, 2021. She also works as a children’s fiction editor at Heinemann, a readers’ advisory specialist at EBSCOHost Novelist, and reviews Caribbean children’s and […]
Colin Bootman
Colin Bootman, Trinidad born, New York raised, received his BFA from The School of Visual Arts in New York. Author of Young Frederick Douglass, 1994, he has illustrated and published more than twenty-five books. Recipient of many awards, he now splits his time between Trinidad and the US.
Lisa Allen-Agostini
Lisa Allen-Agostini is a writer and editor from Trinidad and Tobago. Her books include the novella Death in the Dry River (1000Volt Press, 2024); 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlisted novel The Bread the Devil Knead (Myriad, 2021), for which she also narrated the audiobook; the young adult novels Home Home (Papillote Press, 2018; Delacourte Press, 2020), […]
Senator the Hon. Raziah Ahmed
Senator the Hon. Raziah Ahmed is President of the Senate and a lover of Trinidad and Tobago’s folktales. She is a guest reader at the 2015 Children’s NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
Grace Achoy
Grace Achoy is a Trinidadian librarian whose love of reading and passion for her heritage led to the creation of The Black Lake, which is loosely based on an Amerindian folklore about the Pitch Lake in La Brea. She lives in San Fernando.
Tiphanie Yanique
Tiphanie Yanique is the author of the poetry collection, Wife, which won the 2016 Forward/Felix Dennis Prize for a First Collection and the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry. Tiphanie is also the author of the novel, Land of Love and Drowning, which won the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award from the Center for Fiction, […]
Derek Walcott, OBE
Derek Walcott, OBE, is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist. He is the recipient of numerous honours and awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1992, the Mac Arthur Foundation Fellowship, the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize, 2011 for his collection of poems White Egrets, and the T. S. Eliot Prize.
Daniela Tramacere
Daniela Tramacere, Italian national and macro economist, is Chargé d`Affaires of the EU Delegation to Trinidad and Tobago. With long-standing experience in development cooperation and foreign relations, she has worked in Delhi, Buenos Aires and in Europe.
Bhaskar Sunkara
Bhaskar Sunkara, founding editor and publisher of Jacobin magazine, is a socialist political activist based in New York. He is a member of the non-fiction panel of the OCM Bocas Prize 2015.
Marjorie Thorpe
Marjorie Thorpe, is a former Campus and University Dean of the Faculty of Arts and General Studies at UWI, St. Augustine. From 1988 to 1992 she was Trinidad and Tobago’s ambassador to the United Nations. She was the Overall Vice-Chair of the OCM Bocas Prize from 2011 – 2016.
Johnny Temple
Johnny Temple is the publisher and editor in chief of Akashic Books, an award-winning Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction. Temple won the 2013 Ellery Queen Award; the American Association of Publishers’ 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing; and the 2010 Jay and Deen Kogan Award […]
Olive Senior
Olive Senior, Jamaica’s 2021-2024 Poet Laureate, is the award-winning author of 18 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and children’s literature and other published work. Her many awards include Canada’s Writers Trust Matt Cohen Award for Lifetime Achievement, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, an honorary doctorate from the University of […]
Lawrence Scott
Lawrence Scott is a prize-winning writer from Trinidad & Tobago. He was awarded a Lifetime Literary award in 2012 by the National Library of Trinidad & Tobago for his significant contribution to the literature of Trinidad and Tobago. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2019. His new novel is […]
Brinsley Samaroo
Brinsley Samaroo, former Head of the History department at UWI, St. Augustine, has written extensively on the history of Trinidad and Tobago with a focus on working class movements, Indo-Caribbean history and political and institutional development. His most recent work is The Price of Conscience: Howard Noel Nankivell and Labour Unrest in the British Caribbean.
Silvio Torres-Saillant
Silvio Torres-Saillant, scholar, Dominican Republic born, is a Syracuse University English Professor and former lecturer at universities in Europe and Latin America. His books include Caribbean Poetics (2d. ed., Peepal Tree 2013). He is a member of the non-fiction panel of the OCM Bocas Prize 2015.
Monique Roffey
Monique Roffey, FRSL is an award winning Trinidadian-born, British writer of novels, essays, literary journalism and a memoir that have been translated into several languages. Her 2020 novel The Mermaid of Black Conch (Peepal Tree Press) won the Costa Book of the Year Award and was nominated for eight major awards. Her other Caribbean novels, […]
Colin Robinson
Colin Robinson has returned home to Trinidad and Tobago twice: from Leeds at age four, and from Brooklyn at forty-five. His debut poetry collection You Have You Father Hard Head was published in 2016.