OCM Bocas Prize 2025 shortlist announced

The OCM Bocas Prize 2025 shortlist was announced in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday, March 16, 2025.

The OCM (One Caribbean Media) Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, worth US$10,000, is an annual award for literary books by Caribbean writers, first handed out in 2011. Books are judged in three categories: poetry, fiction (both novels and collections of short stories), and literary non-fiction (books of essays, biography and autobiography, history, current affairs, travel, and other genres). Some of the previous overall winners were Derek Walcott, Monique Roffey, Kei Miller, Canisia Lubrin, Celeste Mohammed, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, and Safiya Sinclair.

The 2025 journey started with the announcement of the shortlist by a jury chaired by Erna Brodber on Sunday. In honour of the prize turning fifteen, the shortlist has five in the running as opposed to the three that have come in the past.

Those in the running from eight different countries are;

Poetry

Jury: Alexis Pauline Gumbs (chair), Adalber Salas Hernández, and Alycia Pirmohamed

• Polkadot Wounds, Anthony Vahni Capildeo (Carcanet)
• West of West Indian, Linzey Corridon (Mawenzi House)
• Some of Us Can Go Back Home, Yashika Graham (Blue Banyan)
• Getting Through: New and Selected Poems, Mervyn Taylor (Beltway Editions)
• Coco Island, Christine Roseeta Walker (Carcanet)

Fiction

Jury: Alycia Pirmohamed (chair), Fleur Sinclair, and Celeste Mohammed

• Village Weavers, Myriam J.A. Chancy (Tin House)
• Sweet Li Jie, David Dabydeen (Peepal Tree Press)
• Pages of the Sea, Anne Hawk (Biblioasis/WeatherGlass Books)
• The Believers: Stories, A.K. Herman (A.R. Phillips)
• Sweetness in the Skin, Ishi Robinson (Penguin Michael Joseph)

Nonfiction

Jury: Rinaldo Walcott (chair), Gabrielle Hosein, and Catherine Lord

• Salvage: Readings from the Wreck, Dionne Brand (Knopf Canada/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• We’re Alone, Edwidge Danticat (Graywolf Press)
• Resistance Refuge Revival: The Indigenous Kalinagos of Dominica, Lennox Honychurch (Papillote Press)
• Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond, Oneka LaBennett (NYU Press)
• Mother Archive: A Dominican Family Memoir, Erika Morillo (University of Iowa Press)

The winners of the three genre categories will be announced on April 6, and the overall winner will be announced on Saturday, May 3.