Sev­en emerg­ing writ­ers from T&T were short­list­ed for the first ever Hol­lick Ar­von Caribbean Writ­ers Prize. On­ly one of 14 writ­ers will be cho­sen from sev­en dif­fer­ent coun­tries in the re­gion. T&T writ­ers in­clude Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni, Vashti Bowlah, Bar­bara Jenk­ins, Ira Math­ur, Sharon Mil­lar, Ann Sec­ond and Aman­da Choo Quan.

They will be up against con­tenders from St Lu­cia, Ja­maica, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Puer­to Ri­co, Ba­hamas and Bermu­da for the $100,000 (TT) prize. The win­ner will be an­nounced at the Bo­cas Lit Fest next month. The new Hol­lick Ar­von Prize (HAP) will of­fer the win­ning Caribbean-based writer time to ad­vance a fic­tion work in progress, a state­ment said.

It in­cludes a year's men­tor­ing by an es­tab­lished au­thor and trav­el to the UK to at­tend a one-week in­ten­sive Ar­von cre­ative writ­ing course of their choice. The win­ning writer will al­so 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, and will re­ceive a cash award of $30,000 (TT).

Chair of the judg­ing pan­el Fun­so Aiye­ji­na said, "We were very pleased with the qual­i­ty of en­tries and the range of new writ­ers com­ing up in the re­gion." He al­so not­ed that on­ly one of the fi­nal­ists was male. A to­tal of 65 writ­ers from 13 Caribbean coun­tries, writ­ing in Eng­lish, en­tered for the prize.

Co-founder of the HAP and di­rec­tor of the Bo­cas Lit Fest which ad­min­is­ters the prize Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown promised that the prize is guar­an­teed for three years. She said, "This is a rare and valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ty for our writ­ers who large­ly lack ac­cess to those who can help ad­vance their work. "One per­son will take home the prize but no­body los­es by putting their work out there. You nev­er know what might hap­pen as a re­sult."

Fi­nal­ists

Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni - T&T

Kather­ine Atkin­son - St Lu­cia

An­gela Barr-Bermu­da

Vashti Bowlah - T&T

Bren­da Lee Brown - An­tigua & Bar­bu­da

Lenworth Burke - Ja­maica

Bar­bara Jenk­ins - T&T

Il­sa Lopez-Valles - Puer­to Ri­co

Ira Math­ur - T&T

Sharon Mil­lar - T&T

Aman­da Choo Quan - T&T

Lelawa­tee Manoo Rah­ming - Ba­hamas/T&T

Ann Sec­ond - T&T

Hazel Sim­monds-Mc­Don­ald - St Lu­cia