Books by al­ready cel­e­brat­ed au­thors from Trinidad and To­ba­go and Haiti have won the po­et­ry, fic­tion, and non-fic­tion cat­e­gories of the 2025 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture.

Writ­ers An­tho­ny Vah­ni Capildeo, Myr­i­am JA Chancy, and Dionne Brand will now vie for the over­all Prize, to be an­nounced at the 2025 Bo­cas Lit Fest.

Now in its 15th year, the an­nu­al OCM Bo­cas Prize recog­nis­es the best books pub­lished by au­thors of Caribbean birth or cit­i­zen­ship, and is con­sid­ered the re­gion’s most dis­tin­guished lit­er­ary award.

Po­et­ry

Polka­dot Wounds, the ninth full-length book by Trinida­di­an-Scot­tish An­tho­ny Vah­ni Capildeo, is the win­ner of the po­et­ry cat­e­go­ry. Part­ly in­spired by a res­i­den­cy in Corn­wall, these po­ems wres­tle equal­ly with na­ture and land­scape, con­cealed or for­got­ten his­to­ries, and ten­sions be­tween com­mu­ni­ty and “loss and long­ing.”

Polka­dot Wounds, write the prize judges, “trans­forms form. Here the ceme­tery is a sanc­tu­ary is a play­ground is a coastal re­treat. Capildeo’s fa­cil­i­ty with form lets them play in lan­guage in a way that makes new spaces for our imag­i­na­tions.

These po­ems make it seem like an easy feat to hold mil­len­nia in one im­age and then an­oth­er, mov­ing in­side of time with grace … It is in fact a mir­a­cle on­ly made pos­si­ble by bring­ing a depth of pre­ci­sion and an open­ness of sound to­geth­er again and again un­til res­o­nance and sur­prise re­veal their kin­ship.”

Capildeo is a past win­ner of the For­ward Prize for Po­et­ry, in 2016, and was re­cent­ly an­nounced the win­ner of a 2025 Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize for Po­et­ry.

Alex­is Pauline Gumbs, An­guil­lan-Amer­i­can au­thor and al­so win­ner of a Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize for Po­et­ry, chaired the po­et­ry pan­el, joined by Cana­di­an-British po­et Aly­cia Pir­mo­hamed, and Venezue­lan po­et and trans­la­tor Adal­ber Salas Hernán­dez.

Fic­tion

In the fic­tion cat­e­go­ry of the 2025 OCM Bo­cas Prize, the win­ner is the nov­el Vil­lage Weavers, by Hait­ian-Cana­di­an-Amer­i­can Myr­i­am J.A. Chancy.

“The nov­el tells the sto­ry of a frac­tured and frac­tious friend­ship be­tween two girls grow­ing up in Haiti in the 1940s. Though from very dif­fer­ent class back­grounds, the girls are drawn ir­re­sistibly to each oth­er as kin­dred spir­its, un­til a fam­i­ly se­cret is aired and their friend­ship is abrupt­ly end­ed,” in the judges’s de­scrip­tion.

“Chancy does not over­play the dra­ma, qui­et­ly demon­strat­ing how the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the rup­ture per­me­ate the girls’ lives in­to their old age … The nov­el shifts across lo­ca­tions in Haiti, France, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and the Unit­ed States with re­mark­able flu­en­cy and, with sim­i­lar poise, cov­ers sev­er­al decades from 1941 to 2003. Chancy is a com­pelling sto­ry-teller, deft­ly keep­ing the fo­cus on her key char­ac­ters while al­so in­di­cat­ing the com­plex po­lit­i­cal con­texts in which they live …

All these fac­tors make Vil­lage Weavers a com­pelling­ly am­bi­tious and beau­ti­ful­ly ex­e­cut­ed nar­ra­tive.”

Chancy is the past win­ner of a Guyana Prize in Lit­er­a­ture Caribbean Award and a Guggen­heim Fel­low­ship.

The fic­tion pan­el was chaired by Guyanese-British lit­er­ary schol­ar Denise de­Caires Narain, Emer­i­tus Read­er in Post­colo­nial Lit­er­a­tures at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex, joined by T&T writer Ce­leste Mo­hammed (her­self the win­ner of the 2022 OCM Bo­cas Prize) and Trinida­di­an-British Fleur Sin­clair, pres­i­dent of the UK Book­sellers As­so­ci­a­tion.

Non­fic­tion

The third win­ner, in the non­fic­tion cat­e­go­ry, is Sal­vage: Read­ings from the Wreck by Trinida­di­an-Cana­di­an Dionne Brand — who pre­vi­ous­ly won the 2019 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Fic­tion with her nov­el The­o­ry. Sal­vage is a se­ries of es­says bring­ing to­geth­er lit­er­ary crit­i­cism and au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, in­ter­ro­gat­ing key works of the West­ern lit­er­ary canon and their colo­nial and racist tropes.

Ac­cord­ing to the judges, Sal­vage “pro­found­ly, beau­ti­ful­ly, and deft­ly changes how we read and see.”

The judges con­tin­ue: “The many lev­els of writ­ing in Sal­vage work to re­think the nov­el not just as con­tent and rep­re­sen­ta­tion but as the spe­cif­ic en­gine of a cer­tain kind of world­ly know­ing. In Brand’s hands, the nov­el as a prod­uct and as a mode of con­quest is ex­posed as part and par­cel of a net­worked sys­tem of sub­ju­ga­tions and sub­or­di­na­tions.

Brand’s beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed work, with its in­tel­li­gent in­sights, pre­cise re-read­ings and bril­liant see­ing gives read­ers an­oth­er ac­count of the ex­pe­ri­ence of read­ing the shad­ows of the cel­e­brat­ed lit­er­ary works she un­packs.”

Brand is an­oth­er past win­ner of a Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize, and her oth­er ho­n­ours in­clude Cana­da’s Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al’s Award for Po­et­ry and the Grif­fin Po­et­ry Prize.

The chair of the non-fic­tion pan­el, Bar­ba­dos-born schol­ar Ri­nal­do Wal­cott, is Pro­fes­sor and Carl V Granger Chair in Africana and Amer­i­can Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Buf­fa­lo. He is joined by Gabrielle Ho­sein, Se­nior Lec­tur­er at the In­sti­tute for Gen­der and De­vel­op­ment Stud­ies, UWI, St Au­gus­tine, and Do­mini­ca-born writer, cu­ra­tor, and artist Cather­ine Lord.

The three chairs of the genre pan­els now make up the fi­nal ju­ry, joined by chief judge Er­na Brod­ber, the cel­e­brat­ed Ja­maican au­thor whose many ho­n­ours in­clude a Wind­ham-Camp­bell Prize for Fic­tion, a Mus­grave Gold Medal from the In­sti­tute of Ja­maica, and a Prince Claus Award.

The over­all win­ner of the 2025 OCM Bo­cas Prize, cho­sen from the three genre win­ners and award­ed US$10,000, will be an­nounced on May 3 dur­ing the 2025 Bo­cas Lit Fest. The oth­er cat­e­go­ry win­ners will each re­ceive US$3,000.

The fes­ti­val will run from May 1 to 4 at the Na­tion­al Li­brary and Old Fire Sta­tion and oth­er venues around Port-of-Spain.