As told to BC Pires

My name is Kevin Jared Ho­sein and I won the Caribbean Com­mon­wealth Short Sto­ry Prize.

Me, I's a man who hail from Cen­tral. I'm an on­ly child, but I have fam­i­ly enough to rent a maxi to have a fam­i­ly out­ing in Man­zanil­la.

Por­tia, my girl­friend, and I try to ra­tio­nalise: do we want a ba­by or a swim­ming pool? It have a lot of ba­bies com­ing in­to this world, but not so much swim­ming pools.

I was shy back in En­ter­prise Gov­ern­ment. Didn't feel like I coul­da con­nect with oth­er chil­dren much. In UWI, the ad­min­is­tra­tion didn't even have a seat for me at my own grad­u­a­tion. They had to scrib­ble in my name af­ter X, Y and Z gone. I re­mem­ber peo­ple watch­ing like, ent "H" come be­fore "Z"?

Read­ing wasn't my thing ini­tial­ly. I was more of a videogame child, them Japan­ese role-play­ing games, al­ways quite sto­ry-heavy. I learnt bout time ma­chines through the Su­per Nin­ten­do game, Chrono Trig­ger, be­fore I even hear bout HG Wells.

I was a cute boy [but] I'm a beast now. My girl­friend will nev­er at­test to it, but I ain't shame.

Be­ing lone­ly and beast­ly had lit­tle to do with get­ting in­to writ­ing. But the soli­tude did help. As well as the mis­ery through sec­ondary school. I had plen­ty anger to get out. Thank God it didn't have Face­book back then, else I woul­da waste all that anger and emo­tion, scour­ing for 'likes' in­stead of mould­ing it in­to cre­ative writ­ing.

A big part of my late teenage years was fi­nal­ly for­sak­ing re­li­gion. I ain't gon' stay on the top­ic long as it have an­oth­er Kevin who can elab­o­rate much bet­ter than me. I 'fraid to even put this out there. "Athe­ist" is a cuss.

I have scenes from my sto­ries in my head, and what­ev­er fits the sound­track to them scenes, is my playlist. From Tears for Fears to 'Sug­ar Bum Bum' to Hans Zim­mer's In­ter­stel­lar score to Dvo­rak's Sym­pho­ny N. 9 in E Mi­nor, 4th Move­ment. Lights off, me on my bed, float­ing in this black ocean of sound, with im­ages dip­ping in and out­ta it, like bright buoys. Most of my writ­ing, I pic­ture cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly.

I can't watch David Lynch's Mul­hol­land Dr with­out feel­ing a knot in my stom­ach. I feel like it have ge­nius every­where and I can't find much oth­er peo­ple to care about it with me. Noth­ing is wrong with Fast and Fu­ri­ous but I usu­al­ly watch the movies where there might on­ly be ten peo­ple max in the cin­e­ma.

I bor­row The Catch­er in the Rye, the first "im­por­tant" book I read, from the school li­brary on a whim in form two. I read it three times a year, un­til low­er six. The card on­ly had my name on it–the li­brar­i­an did find that fun­ny. It in­flu­enced a lot of my ear­ly writ­ing. In­flu­ence? I down­right used to steal the voice from it.

I en­tered the Com­mon­wealth Short Sto­ry Com­pe­ti­tion in 2013, the same year [Trinida­di­an] Sharon Mil­lar, had her big win. Didn't get through. The next year, I tai­lored a sto­ry I thought they woul­da gob­ble up. Not even the short­list, dammit! Last year, I just went, okay, ee­ny-mee­ny-miney-movie - King of Set­tle­ment 4. Click. Sub­mit. Then think­ing right af­ter, 'Boy, you had­da be mad to sub­mit this dis­turb­ing thing to these peo­ple.'

Win­ning the prize put two thoughts in my mind. The first: "Great!" The sec­ond: "I feel this judge is a mad­man!" I'm al­ways un­sure of my own work, but know­ing one of my sto­ries make it that far was val­i­dat­ing.

At school, I teach bi­ol­o­gy and physics. I don't re­gard sci­ence and lit­er­a­ture as op­po­site ends of the spec­trum. Some­times I just bus' open some add maths and do nu­clear fis­sion equa­tions to get my brain jog­ging. Is all neu­rons and synaps­es.

A Tri­ni is some­one who does live in all parts of Trinidad. For many sub­stan­tial, un­in­ter­rupt­ed por­tions of their life. I'm glad we clear that up.

Trinidad is my home, my habi­tat. But in­va­sive species, crime lords, cor­rupt Cab­i­nets and cun­ning crea­tures of the night, run ram­pant. We need to curb this par­a­site. Else we'll end up los­ing it all.

Is hard for me to speak pos­i­tive­ly bout Trinidad some­times. We's a bro­ken coun­try and a bro­ken peo­ple. I ain't ex­clud­ing my­self from that, but I try­ing to put the pieces back to­geth­er.

Read a longer ver­sion of this fea­ture at www.BCRaw.com