OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature 2024 longlists announced.

The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature 2024 longlists were announced in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday, March 10, 2024.

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 prize winners were Derek Walcott, Monique Roffey, Kei Miller, Canisia Lubrin, Celeste Mohammed, and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo.

For 2024, the fourteenth consecutive running of the awards, the overall chair of the cross-genre judging panel is multiple award-winning Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat. Dandicat and her team have announced the longlists in each category. They are;

Fiction

Jury: Rabindranath Maharaj (chair), Curdella Forbes, and Elise Dillsworth

• Ocean Stirrings: A Work of Fiction in Tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Working Mother and Activist, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings, Merle Collins (Grenada)
• Hungry Ghosts, Kevin Jared Hosein (Trinidad)
• You Were Watching from the Sand, Juliana Lamy (Haitian-American).

Nonfiction

Jury: D. Alissa Trotz (chair), Andre Bagoo, and Rachel Mordecai.

• Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters is a collection of essays, talks, and other texts, Myriam J.A. Chancy (Haiti)
• Equal to Mystery: In Search of Harold Sonny Ladoo, Christopher Laird (Trinidad and Tobago)
• How to Say Babylon: A Memoir, Safiya Sinclair (Jamaica)
• Special Mention: Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside — Finding Home in an English Garden, Marchelle Farrell.

Poetry

Jury: Canisia Lubrin (chair), Kayo Chingonyi, Ann-Margaret Lim.

• Self-Portrait as Othello, Jason Allen-Paisant (Jamaica)
• School of Instructions, Ishion Hutchinson (Jamaica)
• The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, Nicole Sealey (US Virgin Islands).

In the second stage of judging for the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize, the judges will announce the winners in the three genre categories on Sunday, April 7. These will go on to compete for the overall Prize of US$10,000, to be announced on Saturday, April 27, during the 14th annual NGC Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain.

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