2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature (Longlist) – Repeating Islands

Nine writers have been longlisted for the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. The OCM Bocas Prize, now in its 14th year, is the most prestigious award dedicated to Caribbean writing. It recognizes books in three genre categories — poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction — published by authors of Caribbean birth or citizenship in the preceding year. Five different countries and territories are represented among the authors of the nine longlisted books.

The winners of the three genre categories will be announced on April 7, 2024; the overall winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature will be announced on April 27, at the 2024 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

[. . .] The 2024 Prize is judged by a panel of distinguished Caribbean and international writers and literary professionals. Canisia Lubrin, St. Lucia-born poet and the 2021 winner of the overall OCM Bocas Prize, chairs the poetry panel, joined by British poet and editor Kayo Chingonyi and Jamaican poet Ann-Margaret Lim. The fiction panel is chaired by Canada-based Trinidad-born novelist Rabindranath Maharaj, joined by UK literary agent Elise Dillsworth and Jamaican novelist and academic Curdella Forbes. The chair of the non-fiction panel, Guyana-born, Canada-based scholar D. Alissa Trotz, is joined by T&T writer Andre Bagoo — himself the winner of the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction — and US-based Jamaican academic and sx salon editor Rachel Mordecai.

The overall chair of the 2024 cross-genre judging panel is the acclaimed Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat. Her numerous awards include a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 2009 and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2017, as well as the OCM Bocas Prize for Non-Fiction in 2011 and the OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction in 2020.

The nine books longlisted for the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize are:

Poetry

• Self-Portrait as Othello, by Jason Allen-Paisant (Carcanet Press)
• School of Instruction, by Ishion Hutchinson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Faber)
• The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, by Nicole Sealey (Alfred A. Knopf/Bloodaxe Books)

Fiction

• Ocean Stirrings: A Work of Fiction in Tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Working Mother and Activist, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings, by Merle Collins (Peepal Tree Press)
• Hungry Ghosts, by Kevin Jared Hosein (Ecco/Bloomsbury)
• You Were Watching from the Sand, by Juliana Lamy (Red Hen Press)

Non-fiction

• Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters, by Myriam J.A. Chancy (University of Texas Press)
• Equal to Mystery: In Search of Harold Sonny Ladoo, by Christopher Laird (Peepal Tree Press)
• How to Say Babylon: A Memoir, by Safiya Sinclair (Simon & Schuster/Fourth Estate) 

For more information, see https://www.bocaslitfest.com/2024/03/10/2024-ocm-bocas-prize-longlist/