Writers from 4 Caribbean Countries in the Running for 2014 Hollick Arvon Prize

Two emerging Jamaican writers, one from Grenada, one from St Vincent, and four from Trinidad and Tobago are the eight finalists for the much-coveted 2014 Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize, now in its second year.

The Prize, administered by The Bocas Lit Fest and worth a total of US$15,000, will give the winning Caribbean-based writer time to advance a non-fiction work in progress. 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.

The winning writer will also receive a cash award of 3,000GBP or US$4,500, 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.

It was a blind competition among 27 entrants.  “We had no idea who we were judging and we were impressed by the general high quality of the works submitted. They ranged from the academic to the personal and were generally imbued with original insights. Many of the works were directed at adult audiences but some were aimed at children and young adults”, said UWI Professor Funso Aiyejina, chair of the international judging panel of five that comprises Lord Hollick - sponsor of the award, Godfrey Smith - 2012 non-fiction winner of the OCM Bocas Prize, Ruth Borthwick of Arvon, and London literary agent, Jennifer Hewson.

A statement from the judges says, “Many of the works were eloquent, insightful, passionate and exciting. Some entries were very ambitious in scope but managed to remain focused on their subject matters. The judges are convinced that the works in contention for the prize venture beyond the safe shores of established themes and promise to create new boundaries for the Caribbean non-fiction genre.”

Marina Salandy-Brown, festival director and co-founder of the Prize, remarked the gender mix of Prize entrants. “In 2013 we had fewer male writers entering their work for fiction but this year there were six, which is a much higher proportion of male entrants for this non-fiction genre of writing, even though only one of them made it onto the list of finalists.”

The winner will be announced at the 2014 NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival which runs from 23 to 27 April in Port of Spain at the National Library.

The National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago is title sponsor of the Trinidad and Tobago annual literary festival, now in its fourth year. One Caribbean Media is sponsor of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. The Ministry of Planning & Sustainable is a main sponsor and First Citizens, flow and Courts are supporting sponsors.

See www.bocaslitfest.com for more information.

2014 Non-fiction Finalists

Turn Around, Judy Antoine, Grenada

Let It Fly, Melissa Balgobin, Trinidad and Tobago

Split Level, Rhoda Bharath, Trinidad and Tobago

17 Rest House Road, Ira Mathur, Trinidad and Tobago

Loving Jamaica, Diana McCaulay, Jamaica

The Plight of the Humanitarian Aid Worker, Nadine McNeil, Jamaica

Canouan Suite, Philip Nanton, St. Vincent

Richard Bridgens, Judy Raymond, Trinidad and Tobago

New Book: The Ladies are Upstairs by Merle Collins

From the 1930s to the new century, Doux Thibaut, one of Merle Collins’ most memorable characters, negotiates a hard life on the Caribbean island of Paz. As a child there is the shame of poverty and illegitimacy, and there are the hazards of sectarianism in an island divided between Catholic and Protestant, the rigidity of a class and racial system where, if you are black, your white employer is always right—and only the ladies live upstairs. Doux confronts all such challenges with style and hidden steel.

We leave Doux as an old lady moving between the homes of her children in Boston and New York, wondering whether they and her grandchildren really appreciate what her engagement with life has taught her.

In these tender and moving stories, Merle Collins demands that we do not forget such lives. If ghosts appear in several of the later stories, they are surely there to warn that amnesia about the past can leave disturbed and restless spirits behind.

In addition to the Doux stories, this collection restores to print an earlier ‘Paz’ story, “Rain Darling”, and their juxtaposition contrasts two very different responses to the hazards of life.

Merle Collins is Grenadian. She is the author of two novels, a collection of short stories and two previous collections of poetry. She teaches Caribbean literature at the University of Maryland.

About Merle Collins


Merle Collins was born in 1950 in Aruba to Grenadian parents, she was taken to Grenada shortly after her birth. Her primary education was in St Georges. She graduated from the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, where she took a degree in English and in Spanish. After graduating in 1972, she returned to Grenada, where she taught History and Spanish for the next two years. She has also taught in St Lucia. In 1980 she was awarded a Masters Georgetown University in Latin American Studies.

She was deeply involved in the Grenadian revolution and served as a coordinator for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean for the Government of Grenada. She left Grenada in 1983.

Her first collection of poetry Because the Dawn Breaks was published by Karia Press in 1985. At this time she was a member of African Dawn, a performance group combining poetry, mime and African music. In 1987, she published her first novel Angel, which follows the lives of both Angel and the Grenadian people as they struggle for independence. This was followed by a collection of short stories, Rain Darling in 1990, and a second collection of poetry, Rotten Pomerack in 1992. Her second novel, The Colour of Forgetting, was published in 1995.

She is currently Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of Maryland. Her critical works include "Themes and Trends in Caribbean Writing Today" in From My Guy to Sci-Fi: Genre and Women's Writing in the Postmodern World, and "To be Free is Very Sweet" in Slavery and Abolition.

Source: http://www.peepaltreepress.com/home.asp

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A Conversation with Tobias Buckell

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has published stories in various magazines and anthologies. He is a Clarion graduate, Writers of The Future winner, and Campbell Award for Best New SF Writer Finalist.

His first novel, Crystal Rain, combined SF adventure and his Caribbean background, as did his second, Ragamuffin. His third book, Sly Mongoose, will be out summer of 2008.

Where were you born?

I was born in Grenada. I currently live, in all places, Ohio. I live far away from the ocean now. I'm happily married, with two dogs, two cats, and a small house in a small town.

What do you do for a living? Why did you choose this vocation?

Right now my income is divided across writing fiction and writing freelance articles and some blogging for pay. I've always wanted to be a writer, and love being creative. I used to work in technology support, but after getting laid off, decided to make the jump into trying to do what I loved. And for some crazy reason, it worked.

Who are your three favorite writers? Why?

Cordwainer Smith, Arthur C. Clarke, and Bruce Sterling. Smith amazes me. An American growing in China, he wrote some really imaginative whacked out novels that still read freshly to this day. A lot of science fiction ages as time goes by and we learn more about the world and technology. It's often dated by societal mores and the times it was written in. But Cordwainer's crazy tales are just as lyrical, haunting, and paint just as strange a future of our world as it did over fifty years ago. I like Clarke for his sheer engineering, not only did he write science fiction, but his imagination gave us geosynchronous satellites. He literally helped change the face of this world with his ideas. And Sterling I love because he was the first SF writer I read who wrote a book that took the developing world seriously, setting his novel Islands in The Net in Grenada, India, then Africa. As a result of that, I felt empowered to try and write my own fusion SF and Caribbean novels.

What was the first book you fell in love with and how have your reading habits changed over the years?

The first book I remember falling in love with was Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. One, it features something fairly unusual in SF, a black protagonist, a scientist who travels through space and time to see what the fate of the human species will be. But the thing that blew me away was this big picture view and question of what humanity as a whole was, where it might be headed, what it was suited for, and where evolution may take it. The book lit my imagination on fire at the tender age of six or seven. I've been engrossed by science fiction ever since.

What are you reading now?

In the mail is Karl Schroeder's Queen of Candesce, and then a handful of books by Bob Baer about the CIA's negative activities throughout the world that I'm reading as research for one of my next novels.

What makes you laugh?

Everything. I'm pretty easily amused, to be honest. I amuse myself, I have trouble telling jokes often enough because I crack myself up while telling them. Life, people, fun, sitcoms, I'm easygoing and very entertain-able.

What are your other passions?

I'm a geek, I love my computers and new technologies. Blogging. Interacting with people. Information in any form I can consume it. I'm aware that I'm a bit undeveloped in the spare hobbies, I've spent so much time working to become an author that it took up all my spare time from the time I was 15 until now. That's 13 years of turning down partying and so forth, except for three years of playing soccer in college. I think it's getting time to pick up an instrument or learn a martial art to find something extra to do.

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On Wednesday (10/3/07), "A Conversation with Richard Grayson."

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Scott Rudin and Miramax Films have acquired feature rights to Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. (Via Maud Newton)

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