The judges for the 2015 Hol­lick Ar­von Caribbean Writ­ers Prize have an­nounced a short­list of five, cho­sen from among the ten pre­vi­ous­ly longlist­ed writ­ers. The lead­ing Caribbean Prize for emerg­ing writ­ers will be award­ed in the field of po­et­ry.

The five po­ets who will now com­pete for this unique prize come from three Caribbean coun­tries: the Ba­hamas, the British Vir­gin Is­lands, and T&T. In al­pha­bet­ic or­der, they are:

�2 El­liot Bastien, T&T

�2 Nico­lette Bethel, The Ba­hamas

�2 Danielle Boodoo-For­tun�, T&T

�2 Richard Georges, British Vir­gin

Is­lands

�2 Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan, T&T

Joint­ly ad­min­is­tered by The Bo­cas Lit Fest in T&T, and Ar­von in Lon­don, the Prize will give the win­ning Caribbean-based writer time to ad­vance a po­et­ry col­lec­tion. In pre­vi­ous years the Prize was open to writ­ers of fic­tion and non-fic­tion. It in­cludes a year's men­tor­ing by an es­tab­lished au­thor and trav­el to the Unit­ed King­dom to at­tend a one-week in­ten­sive cre­ative writ­ing course of their choice at Ar­von.

A re­lease said the win­ning writer will al­so re­ceive a cash award of US$4,500, and have three days in Lon­don to net­work with lit­er­ary pro­fes­sion­als, host­ed by the UK's lead­ing cre­ative writ­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion, Ar­von, in as­so­ci­a­tion with Free Word Cen­tre and agents Rogers, Co­leridge & White, who have first op­tion of agent­ing the win­ning writer.

Pre­vi­ous win­ners of the much-cov­et­ed and valu­able Prize were Ja­maican Di­ana Mc­Caulay in 2014 (non-fic­tion), and the in­au­gur­al Prize in 2013 went to Trinida­di­an, Bar­bara Jenk­ins (fic­tion).

At the 2015 fes­ti­val me­dia launch last month, co-founder of the Prize, Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, lament­ed that the Prize may be in its fi­nal year as the three-year spon­sor­ship ends with this year's win­ner.

"We are on the look out for a spon­sor with re­gion­al reach to take over the fund­ing of this unique Caribbean-wide prize from 2016. Few re­gion-wide cul­tur­al ini­tia­tives ex­ist and this is the op­por­tu­ni­ty for a far­sight­ed spon­sor to brand some­thing very spe­cial."

The in­ter­na­tion­al judg­ing pan­el of five is chaired by Fun­so Aiye­ji­na, au­thor, schol­ar, and for­mer Dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Hu­man­i­ties and Ed­u­ca­tion at UWI's St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. On be­half of his fel­low judges, Dr Ayeji­na said, "Any one of the five short­list­ed po­ets is good enough to walk away with the prize! These po­ets are con­fi­dent ex­plor­ers of the hu­man con­di­tion. They pos­sess the req­ui­site in­di­vid­ual styles for an ef­fort­less ar­tic­u­la­tion of their vi­sions and are as much chil­dren of the great po­et­ic tra­di­tion of the Caribbean as they are pur­vey­ors of new vis­tas and metaphors."

Oth­er judges are po­et and schol­ar Ed­ward Baugh, Ruth Borth­wick of Ar­von, Lon­don lit­er­ary agent Jen­nifer Hew­son, and Car­o­line Hol­lick, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the cur­rent spon­sors in the UK, the Hol­lick Fam­i­ly Char­i­ta­ble Trust.

The win­ner will be an­nounced at the 2015 NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, which runs from April 29 to May 3 in Port-of-Spain at the Na­tion­al Li­brary.