Caribbean writing gets another boost with the second annual OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature which will reward the best Caribbean book published this year with a US$10,000 prize. Opening for entries tomorrow, the 2012 prize will be announced in April next year at the Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago's annual literary festival. The best book is chosen from the winner in each of three categories-non-fiction, fiction and poetry. Published writers who are Caribbean by birth or citizenship, living and working anywhere in the world, are eligible for the prize, which in 2011, its inaugural year, attracted sixty entries from well over a dozen countries.
White Egrets, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott's eloquent musing over age and mortality was the winner of the first OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. In contention for the US$10,000 reward for the best book of 2010 was How To Escape From a Leper Colony by first time published author and winner of the fiction category, Tiphanie Yanique, and Create Dangerously by young and celebrated Haitian author, Edwidge Danticat, winner of the non-fiction category.
Eleven judges, led by acclaimed Barbadian author, George Lamming, will decide on the best book published by a Caribbean writer in 2011. Founder of the annual prize, Marina Salandy-Brown, says choosing the judges is a little complex: "If they have a book that is eligible for entry to the prize, we have to rule them out for that year. Then we must get a spread across the region and the Diaspora, a good gender balance and mix of genre specialists and, of course, they must have the time."
Information on the OCM Bocas Prize is available at www.bocaslitfest.com and on facebook.