IRA MATH­UR

Book­shelf spot­lights Trinidad and To­ba­go writ­ers mak­ing their mark on the in­ter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary stage this week.

Fol­low­ing this in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, the Bo­cas Lit Fest has con­grat­u­lat­ed six Caribbean writ­ers named to the 2026 short­list for the Com­mon­wealth Short Sto­ry Prize, drawn from 7,806 en­tries world­wide. Five are from Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The short­list­ed en­tries are “Riv­er Mouth” by Jochelle Greaves Siew, “Plen­ty Time” by Ce­leste Mo­hammed, “The Ser­pent in the Grove” by Jamir Nazir, “Pom Pom Peedeem Pom” by Ja­son Dook­er­an, and “Pot Hound Re­pub­lic” by Roger-Mark De Souza. The re­main­ing Caribbean sto­ry, from Guyana, is “The Meta­mor­pho­sis of Miss Al­ice” by Cos­ma­ta Lindie.

The Com­mon­wealth Foun­da­tion, es­tab­lished in 1965, ad­min­is­ters the prize. The short sto­ry prize has been award­ed an­nu­al­ly since 2012, with en­tries sub­mit­ted across the Com­mon­wealth, then as­sessed through re­gion­al judg­ing and a fi­nal in­ter­na­tion­al se­lec­tion. For 2026, the judg­ing pan­el is chaired by Louise Doughty, with Fred Khu­ma­lo, Ri­fat Mu­nim, Nor­ma Dun­ning, Shar­ma Tay­lor, and Max­ine Bene­ba Clark as judges. Few­er than 200 en­tries ad­vanced to the long list this cy­cle.

The pres­ence of five writ­ers from Trinidad and To­ba­go on a sin­gle short­list places lo­cal work with­in a wider field of sub­mis­sion, and judg­ing is a ma­jor tri­umph for the lit­er­ary com­mu­ni­ty. Sto­ries writ­ten in small set­tings move through an in­ter­na­tion­al se­lec­tion process, where en­tries are read across re­gions and as­sessed with­in a shared frame­work.

Com­mon­wealth awards have long recog­nised Caribbean tal­ent. Earl Lovelace set the pace when he won the Com­mon­wealth Writ­ers’ Prize in 1997 for Salt. His de­but, While Gods Are Falling (1965), ap­peared dur­ing the ear­ly years of in­de­pen­dence. Lat­er, he pub­lished The Wine of As­ton­ish­ment (1982) and Is Just a Movie (2011), which won the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture in 2012. Lovelace worked at the Trinidad Guardian, like VS Naipaul and Derek Wal­cott, but opt­ed to re­main in the coun­try. Lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties and speech shape his work, and his nar­ra­tives are au­then­tic and minute­ly lo­cal­ly ob­served. This ap­proach now ap­pears in Com­mon­wealth-short­list­ed writ­ers and re­cent Caribbean fic­tion.

Look­ing at past suc­cess­es, the short sto­ry archive records en­tries across re­cent years. Lance Dowrich was a re­gion­al win­ner in 2016 for “Ethel­bert and the Free Cheese.” In­grid Per­saud re­ceived the over­all prize in 2017 for “The Sweet Sop.” Kevin Jared Ho­sein re­ceived the over­all prize in 2018 for “Pas­sage.” Por­tia Sub­ran was a re­gion­al win­ner in 2024 for “The Dev­il’s Son.”

Ho­sein’s “Pas­sage” is set across bars and for­est work, with shifts be­tween for­mal Eng­lish and de­mot­ic speech. Dowrich’s sto­ry is con­struct­ed through di­a­logue in a work­place set­ting. Sharon Mil­lar’s “Friends” was writ­ten dur­ing a pe­ri­od when kid­nap­ping was wide­spread in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Her col­lec­tion, The Whale House and Oth­er Sto­ries, moves across coastal and ur­ban lo­ca­tions. Sub­ran’s “The Dev­il’s Son” is set with­in a house­hold, fol­low­ing a child, a grand­fa­ther, and a crime.

These en­tries ex­tend in­to longer works by the same writ­ers. Ce­leste Mo­hammed’s Pleas­antview, which re­ceived the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, is set in a Port-of-Spain neigh­bour­hood and is or­gan­ised as a linked sto­ries col­lec­tion. In­grid Per­saud’s Love Af­ter Love fol­lows three lives be­tween Trinidad and the di­as­po­ra. Kevin Jared Ho­sein’s nov­el Hun­gry Ghosts is set in rur­al Trinidad and is struc­tured around land, labour, and vi­o­lence.

The Com­mon­wealth Short Sto­ry Prize will an­nounce its 2026 over­all win­ner lat­er this year.

Bo­cas Lit Fest gain­ing mo­men­tum

Mean­while, work has been build­ing over more than a decade of the Bo­cas Lit Fest in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with the fes­ti­val re­turn­ing this year un­der the theme “All To­geth­er Now,” and events sched­uled from April 30 to May 30 in Port-of-Spain.

The fes­ti­val is based at the Na­tion­al Li­brary and the Old Fire Sta­tion, with ad­di­tion­al events across the city. The pro­gramme in­cludes read­ings, pan­el dis­cus­sions, work­shops, per­for­mances, and mu­sic, along­side the Stand and De­liv­er open mic and the Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam fi­nals. Youth pro­gram­ming is sched­uled on May 1, fol­lowed by chil­dren’s events on May 2.

Or­gan­is­ers con­firmed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 150 par­tic­i­pants. Vis­it­ing writ­ers in­clude Mar­garet Bus­by, Cheryl Boyce Tay­lor, Ray­mond Antrobus, and Christi­na Cooke, as well as writ­ers based in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Bus­by is billed as the head­lin­er for the Bo­cas Lit Fest this year.

At the fes­ti­val launch, or­gan­is­ers an­nounced the 2026 cat­e­go­ry win­ners of the OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture. Can­isia Lu­brin re­ceived the po­et­ry award for The World Af­ter Rain, Justin Haynes won the fic­tion cat­e­go­ry for Ibis, and Tes­sa McWatt re­ceived the non-fic­tion award for The Snag: A Moth­er, a For­est, and Wild Grief. The over­all prizewin­ner will be an­nounced on May 2. The Bo­cas Lit Fest was found­ed by Ma­ri­na Sa­landy-Brown, who now serves as Pres­i­dent of the Board, while cur­rent op­er­a­tions are led by Nicholas Laugh­lin as Fes­ti­val and Pro­gramme Di­rec­tor and Geor­gia Pop­plewell as Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor.

Writ­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go who once op­er­at­ed in si­los now have greater op­por­tu­ni­ties large­ly due to the Bo­cas Lit Fest.

They de­vel­op man­u­scripts through work­shops and in­for­mal groups, read their work pub­licly at fes­ti­val events, and sub­mit to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions. Some writ­ers pub­lish short fic­tion be­fore mov­ing in­to longer forms and re­vis­it­ing the short sto­ry through com­pe­ti­tion cy­cles. Their work cir­cu­lates through small press­es, prize plat­forms, and pub­lic read­ings. These in­ter­twined op­por­tu­ni­ties al­low new and emerg­ing writ­ers to start at var­i­ous points: ear­ly work finds an au­di­ence through open mic ses­sions and work­shops be­fore en­ter­ing prize sub­mis­sions and, even­tu­al­ly, pub­li­ca­tion. De­spite out­ward move­ment through read­ers, prizes, and the page, the writ­ing re­mains root­ed in place and dri­ven by dis­tinc­tive lo­cal voic­es.

Ira Math­ur is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, a Guardian colum­nist, and the win­ner of the 2023 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Non-Fic­tion.