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.
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.
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 […]
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), […]
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.
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 […]
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.
Jeremy Poynting
Jeremy Poynting is the founder of Peepal Tree Press based in the UK, the leading publisher of contemporary Caribbean writing. As a literary critic he has published widely in journals such as The New Voices and Journal of Commonwealth Literature on the topic of Indo-Caribbean literature. He is the recipient of the 2016 Bocas Henry […]
Shivanee Ramlochan
Shivanee Ramlochan’s first book of poems, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting (Peepal Tree Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 People’s Choice T&T Book of the Year, and shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Shivanee was shortlisted for the 2018 Bridport Prize for Poetry. “The Red Thread Cycle”, […]
Sharon Millar
Sharon Millar was born and lives in Trinidad. She is the winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the 2012 Small Axe Short Fiction Award. Her first collection The Whale House and other stories (Peepal Tree Press 2015) was long-listed for the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Pepperpot: Best New […]
Earl Lovelace
Earl Lovelace is a Trinidadian writer. His books include the Caribbean classic The Dragon Can’t Dance, and Salt, winner of the 1997 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His novel Is Just a Movie won the 2012 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and the Grand Prize for Caribbean Literature from the Regional Council of Guadeloupe. He was […]
Karen Lord
Barbadian writer Dr. Karen Lord is the author, most recently, of The Blue, Beautiful World, longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Redemption in Indigo, which won the William L. Crawford Award and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Her other works include […]
Danielle Delon
Danielle Delon, Director of the NGC Children’s Bocas Lit Fest, is an author, editor and publisher. Her books include Bridges of Trinidad and Tobago: Side to Side and The Letters of Margaret Mann.
Bridget Brereton
Bridget Brereton is Professor Emerita of history at UWI, St. Augustine, and author of Race Relations in Colonial Trinidad and A History of Modern Trinidad, among other books. She was chair of the non-fiction judging panel for the inaugural OCM Bocas Prize in 2011, and again in 2020.
Rhoda Bharath
Rhoda Bharath is a Trinidadian writer, teacher, and political and cultural blogger. Her debut book The Ten Day’s Executive and Other Stories was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2015.
Funso Aiyejina
Funso Aiyejina is the former Deputy Festival Director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest and a former member of the board of directors of the Bocas Lit Fest. He is the former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine and now Professor Emeritus. He is […]