Safiya Sinclair was declared the winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature 2024 in Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday, April 27, 2024. Arif Ali was also awarded the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award 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 winners were Derek Walcott, Monique Roffey, Kei Miller, Canisia Lubrin, Celeste Mohammed, and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo.
For 2024, the overall chair of the cross-genre judging panel was multiple award-winning Haitian American writer Edwidge Danticat. She led a team in each of the genres starting with fiction with Rabindranath Maharaj (chair), Curdella Forbes, and Elise Dillsworth; nonfiction with D. Alissa Trotz (chair), Andre Bagoo, and Rachel Mordecai; and poetry with Canisia Lubrin (chair), Kayo Chingonyi, Ann-Margaret Lim. This team perused the texts and announced the longlists in each category on March 10 before the shortlists were revealed on April 7.
The winner was revealed at the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain on Saturday evening. The colourful evening with music and speeches as well as readings from all of the shortlisted entries. Each of the shortlisted writers read from their work and then were awarded in their category. The winner announced by jury chair Edwidge Danticat was declared to be How to Say Babylon: A Memoir, Safiya Sinclair (Jamaica).
“Thank you to everyone. Thank you to the Bocas Lit Fest and to the Bocas Prize judges for this torch of encouragement, for your vote of confidence in me, and for your constant support of Caribbean writers and Caribbean literature. Thank you to the entire amazing Bocas crew, you always make me feel at home. Everything I write and dream and imagine is for the Caribbean. I wrote How To Say Babylon for all the Caribbean women whose works and deeds so often unseen and unsung, women who are overlooked and forgotten in the margins of history. I wrote this book for all the Caribbean women who gave us the wildfire of our dialects, our memories, and our folklore. And in many ways too, I wrote this book for my father and the Rasta brethren like him who gave me the fire of my linguistic rebellion to say what I mean and mean what I say. I wrote this in hopes that my father my understand me a little bit better, that he might finally hear me,” said Safiya Sinclair on winning.
She added, “I am also thankful for the inspiration of so many writers who paved the way for me and who made this writing life possible for so many of us. Thank you so much, Edwige Danticat, Sylvia Wynter, Lorna Goodison, Jamaica Kincaid, Maryse Conde, Dionne Brand, Thank you.”
She also stated a wish to see an end to colonial violence across the world and an end to the horrific genocide in Gaza, a dream to see a free Palestine in her lifetime, a free Congo, and a free Haiti.
Also handed out was the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award named for the late BBC World Service radio producer Henry Swanzy. He was a catalysing figure in the development of modern West Indian literature, having worked from 1946 to 1954 as producer of the influential Caribbean Voices radio programme, originally founded by Jamaican Una Marson. The award was created to honour and celebrate the contributions of editors, broadcasters, publishers, critics, and others who have devoted their careers to developing Caribbean literature, often behind the scenes in 2013. Previous winners have been publishers 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, and Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge in 2023.
The winner of the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award 2024 is Arif Ali 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. Publisher and editor Arif Ali is the founder of Anif Publications.
“We recognise his tenacious dedication to giving Caribbean and Black British voices a creative platform when they were denied it by countless others,” said Bocas Lit Fest Founder Marina Salandy-Brown when announcing the winner.
Here are some images from the ceremony culled from the festival’s YouTube page which streamed the ceremony.
Watch the full ceremony below;
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