"When you look at Caribbean writ­ing, there seems to be a lull since the gen­er­a­tion af­ter Lovelace" says Rho­da Bharath, one of the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest's Plan­ning Com­mit­tee mem­bers. "Ja­maica may be the ex­cep­tion with au­thors like Tanya Shirley and Kei Miller, but there are not a lot of new writ­ers com­ing out of the re­gion it­self." Bo­cas com­plet­ed its sec­ond run this April to rave re­views. It is the brain­child of Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown who, af­ter work­ing in the me­dia in Britain for many years, was amazed to find up­on her re­turn to Trinidad that peo­ple in her book-read­ing group weren't fa­mil­iar with the writ­ers she was read­ing. "I re­alised that the Caribbean Di­as­po­ra was so dis­parate; many of our best writ­ers live out­side the re­gion," Sa­landy-Brown ex­plains. "I want­ed to cre­ate a fo­rum to bring us all to­geth­er-and make it fun!" In just two years, it has be­come a space in which Caribbean Di­as­po­ra writ­ers can re­con­nect with their roots and widen their au­di­ence and lo­cal writ­ers feel sup­port­ed and val­ued. This fo­cus on writ­ers from with­in the re­gion is an im­por­tant facet of Bo­cas. En­ter the Hol­lick Ar­von Caribbean Writ­ers Prize. "I'm de­light­ed that this new prize is as­so­ci­at­ed with the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest," says Sa­landy-Brown. "It's a great chance for a writer."

Worth £10,000 and guar­an­teed for the next three years (fic­tion in 2013, non-fic­tion in 2014, and po­et­ry in 2015), the prize of­fers an emerg­ing Caribbean writer (writ­ing in Eng­lish) the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­vance-or even fin­ish-a lit­er­ary work. Spon­sored by the Hol­lick Fam­i­ly Char­i­ta­ble Trust, work­ing in con­junc­tion with the Ar­von Foun­da­tion (a char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion which pro­motes cre­ative writ­ing and, ac­cord­ing to Sa­landy-Brown, is "bril­liant at ad­min­is­ter­ing train­ing cours­es"), it of­fers the win­ner cash to the tune of £3,000; the chance to be men­tored by an es­tab­lished writer over the course of a year; and a week-long cre­ative-writ­ing course at one of Ar­von's in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed writ­ing hous­es, all ex­pens­es paid. It al­so of­fers un­known au­thors a fight­ing chance to ac­tu­al­ly get pub­lished-the win­ner gets three days in Lon­don with one goal in mind: to net­work with ed­i­tors and pub­lish­ers who might be in­ter­est­ed in his or her work. This crit­i­cal part of the lit­er­ary busi­ness, which many good writ­ers who don't live in met­ro­pol­i­tan ar­eas are not able to ac­cess, is al­so be­ing host­ed by Ar­von, in con­junc­tion with the Free Word Cen­tre (a Lon­don-based lit­er­a­ture and ideas or­gan­i­sa­tion) and the lit­er­ary agency of Rogers, Co­leridge & White. Ruth Borth­wick, Ar­von's chief ex­ec­u­tive, said she was "thrilled for Ar­von to work with La­dy Hol­lick and the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest to find and de­vel­op the next gen­er­a­tion of writ­ers fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of Lor­na Good­i­son, Earl Lovelace and Derek Wal­cott."

This is a huge step for­ward for bud­ding Caribbean writ­ers, many of whom are long­ing for the chance to con­cen­trate on their craft, im­prove their skills and con­nect with the wider lit­er­ary world: fel­low writ­ers, to be sure, but per­haps even more im­por­tant­ly, the agents, pub­lish­ers and mar­ket­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion hous­es that can make the sto­ries in their heads and hearts come to life on pa­per or e-book. This is es­pe­cial­ly crit­i­cal against the cur­rent back­drop of re­gion­al pub­lish­ing. Oth­er than Star Ap­ple Books in Trinidad, not many re­gion­al pub­lish­ers are han­dling fic­tion-not Ian Ran­dle Pub­lish­ers (based in Ja­maica), not the uni­ver­si­ty press­es. "I un­der­stand it," says Sa­landy-Brown. "There's no tra­di­tion of pub­lish­ing fic­tion and we don't have the crit­i­cal mass, so it's more risky. But it al­so means there's no de­vel­op­ment of fic­tion writ­ing. This prize is in­tend­ed to find peo­ple with tal­ent who will ben­e­fit from the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be craft­ed." Bar­bara Jenk­ins, a writer who has won the Com­mon­wealth Short Sto­ry Com­pe­ti­tion (Caribbean Re­gion) on two con­sec­u­tive oc­ca­sions, says she has a "vest­ed in­ter­est" in the Hol­lick Ar­von prize: "I in­tend to ap­ply!" She hopes lots of oth­er writ­ers do as well, so that this gap­ing need in the lo­cal lit­er­ary land­scape will be un­cov­ered. "There is so much qual­i­ty writ­ing that is ly­ing dor­mant for want of op­por­tu­ni­ty," Jenk­ins says. Part of the at­trac­tion of the Hol­lick Ar­von prize for her is its fo­cus on de­vel­op­ment of the craft of writ­ing. "Things like the Com­mon­wealth Prize make you think you're do­ing some­thing right, be­cause you get the val­i­da­tion," she ex­plains. "But it doesn't re­al­ly help your writ­ing to grow. This prize can do that and take it to the next lev­el."

While win­ning would be great, Jenk­ins-and any oth­er writ­ers who give it a shot-stands to gain any­way, since all sub­mis­sions are be­ing re­viewed by a judg­ing pan­el that in­cludes rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Bo­cas, Hol­lick, Ar­von and Rogers, Co­leridge & White. "It's a show­case for writ­ing," says Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown. "You're get­ting your work seen by the right peo­ple." There's re­al­ly no oth­er prize like it, at least not in the re­gion. The de­vel­op­men­tal ben­e­fits are amaz­ing, but strip away the men­tor­ship, net­work­ing and work­shop­ping el­e­ments and TT$30,000 doesn't seem like a lot to tide a prospec­tive au­thor over; book writ­ing, of­ten a slow and te­dious process, can take years. "The prize is meant for work-in-progress writ­ers," Ma­ri­na ex­plains. "It's to help those who have al­ready been writ­ing. . .to help progress their work. It's not meant to pay you to fin­ish a book." As a safe­guard against ap­pli­cants who hear about the prize and then scram­ble to write some­thing by dead­line, en­try re­quire­ments in­clude the sub­mis­sion of pre­vi­ous­ly pub­lished work (even if it's a mag­a­zine ar­ti­cle or self-pub­lished book) to prove com­mit­ment to the art of writ­ing, the same kind of com­mit­ment that the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest is mak­ing to the con­sump­tion of that art. "We're so un­used to talk­ing about books," says Sa­landy-Brown. "We think it's some­thing that 'they'-'they' be­ing some­one we're not equal to-do." Yet, the fes­ti­val grew by 28 per cent from its first year to its sec­ond. Peo­ple came from all over the coun­try-and the re­gion-to be part of it, so the or­gan­is­ers have cer­tain­ly tapped in­to some­thing. "Books are about ideas," Ma­ri­na says. "Emo­tion, thoughts, in­sights, ex­pe­ri­ences-of abuse, mi­gra­tion, sport, fash­ion, his­to­ry, ge­net­ics, you name it. That's what the fes­ti­val is about. And it's free and open." If there is a down­side to this new prize, sug­gests Rho­da Bharath, it's that the com­pe­ti­tion will be stiff. "But that's not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing," she adds. "All it means is that the cal­i­bre of writ­ing com­ing out of it will be the best in the re­gion." She al­so makes the point that the Hol­lick Ar­von prize is one of the few re­sources that writ­ers liv­ing and work­ing in the Caribbean can ac­cess. "It would be nice if oth­er cor­po­rate cit­i­zens were to of­fer in­cen­tives like this, be­cause it would mean more qual­i­ty writ­ing com­ing out of the re­gion."

In­ter­est­ed writ­ers can log on to www.bo­caslit­fest.com/hol­lick-ar­von-caribbean-writ­ers-prize.html for more in­for­ma­tion and to down­load an en­try form. Con­tact george.palmer@ar­von­foun­da­tion.org or tele­phone 011 44 207 324 2554 for en­quiries. Dead­line for en­tries is Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012.