Spo­ken word po­et Alexan­dra C Stew­art has been named the 2023 win­ner of the NGC Bo­cas Youth Writer Award, adding to her list of ac­co­lades.

The 25-year-old was an­nounced as the win­ner of the award, which recog­nis­es tal­ent­ed young writ­ers from T&T, at the clos­ing event of the 2023 NGC Bo­cas Youth Fest yes­ter­day.

Stew­art is no stranger to the lit­er­ary spot­light, as a three-time cham­pi­on and eight-time fi­nal­ist in the First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam.

A re­lease stat­ed, “The NGC Bo­cas Youth Writer Award judges com­mend­ed Stew­art for “her evoca­tive and pow­er­ful spo­ken word piece ‘Dear Daugh­ter’, which push­es past ‘page and stage’, liv­ing on­line and rent-free in the minds of any­one lucky enough to hear or read it”.

The award, spon­sored by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go, comes with a cash prize of $5,000.

“The judges al­so gave an ho­n­ourable men­tion to writer Kela Roberts for her cre­ative non-fic­tion piece When I Think About Cli­mate Change —which ar­tic­u­lates, with per­sua­sive au­thor­i­ty, the frus­tra­tions of her gen­er­a­tion in­her­it­ing the bur­dens of cli­mate change.”

UWI stu­dent Scyl­li­na Samuel was the third writer on the award short­list.

Chaired by au­thor Ce­leste Mo­hammed—her­self the win­ner of the 2022 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture—the NGC Bo­cas Youth Writer Award judg­ing pan­el al­so in­clud­ed 2023 First Cit­i­zens Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam win­ner Kyle Her­nan­dez, ad­ver­tis­ing ex­ec­u­tive and song­writer Julie Har­ris, and writer and ed­i­tor Britt McHugh.

Mo­hammed said the judges were pleased with the award nom­i­na­tions. “It was en­cour­ag­ing to see so many young peo­ple who are not on­ly pur­su­ing their pas­sion for writ­ing with re­solve but are al­so max­imis­ing the ben­e­fits of so­cial me­dia to make an im­pact on the con­scious­ness of our wider world,” she said.