A monthly roundup of news about Caribbean books and writers, presented by the Bocas Lit Fest.
New Releases
Concrete Dreams (Peepal Tree Press), by Ferdinand Dennis traverses some forty years of life in Caribbean-shaped Britain, grounded in the disharmonious relationship between brutish Lucas Bostock and his wife, Rhoda. A story of intense familial disenfranchisement, Concrete Dreams is an often-painful exploration of the Windrush era, and the struggle for selfhood and identity it engendered in so many who journeyed under its banner. Dennis writes father-son vicissitudes with an often uncomfortable, but productive intensity: this family’s fracture also exposes the pulsing heart of its individual and intertwined ambitions. Memories of Jamaica intersect with immediacies of London, spliced with grave introspection.
After Caliban (Duke University Press), by Erica Moiah James studies the methodology and impact of several Caribbean artists of the 1990s who gained prominence in the global art world, through the lens of decolonization. The work takes its impetus from Aimé Césaire’s rewriting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which the previously-maligned antagonist Caliban emerges as the author of his own autonomous history. After Caliban focuses on the art and practice of Marc Latamie, Janine Antoni, Belkis Ayón, Edouard Duval-Carrié, and Christopher Cozier. James examines how each artist refused conformity or flattening of their work, contextualized against historical and social realities.
Beyond Borders, the autobiography of business magnate Arthur Lok Jack, paints a convincing, credible portrait of a life dedicated to innovation. Lok Jack documents his humble beginnings as the child of Chinese and Indian small shopkeepers, illustrating how his early leanings towards entrepreneurship were instinctive. Beyond Borders provides compelling insight behind the personal and professional life of the man responsible for so many nationwide stories, through Associated Brands Investments Ltd. and the Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business. More than a mere account of resting confidently on one’s
laurels, the autobiography functions as a primer for resilience and determination.
The Hidden Island (Ig Publishing), by Abraham Jiménez Enoa situates its concerns in the lives of everyday Cubans, most of them struggling to eke out an existence against bleakly oppressive odds. These essays take contemporary Cuba out of the frame of an idyllic tourist destination, going behind those fabrications to showcase the grim realities of what it means to be a poor, working-class citizen of the island. From underground lottery workers to illegal women’s boxing professionals, The Hidden Island makes room for even the most marginalized of voices to emerge, and for a broad swathe of injustices to be uncovered.
An Unconquerable Spirit (Ian Randle Publishers), by Helen Francis-Seaman chronicles the resistance of the Kalinago, Garifuna and Maroon communities across the eastern Caribbean. Subtitled “The Indigenous Resistance to Colonisation in the Caribbean Windward Islands”, An Unconquerable Spirit seeks to dismantle imperialist versions of history, by focusing on the uncredited heroes of indigenous peoples, predominantly in St. Vincent and Dominica. Charting events spanning from 1492 to 1952, Francis-Seaman’s study is as revelatory as it is encompassing. Rooted in the sovereignty and determination of the First Nations peoples of the Caribbean, this timely addition to academic history has applications for all readers.
Awards and Prizes
Haitian writer Yanick Lahens received the 2025 Grand Prix du Roman from the Académie Française for Passagères de nuit, a novel tracing generations of Black enslaved women between Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) and New Orleans. Drawing from scarce family records, Lahens crafted a powerful 19th-century saga centered on Elizabeth, a young mixed-race woman forced to flee New Orleans and return to her ancestral land, Haiti. The second part follows her son amid the newly independent Haitian Republic of 1804. Born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Lahens pays tribute to the resilience and inner strength of enslaved women and their descendants. She previously won the Prix Femina in 2014 for Bain de Lune.
Trinidadian-Scottish poet Anthony Vahni Capildeo has won a 2025 Saltire Book Award (Scotland’s National Book Awards) in the poetry category for their collection, Polkadot Wounds (Carcanet Press). The award conferred a cash value of £2,000, alongside bespoke commissioned art. Capildeo won the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry for the same collection earlier this year. The ninth collection from the poet, Polkadot Wounds addresses the multitudinous emotional responses brought about by living in the world’s anthropocene, informed by geography, ecology, and faith. The Saltire Book Award judges called the work
“boundary pushing and rich.”
https://www.hayfestival.com/eccles-institute-hay-festival-writers-awardJamaica-born British writer Jacqueline Crooks was announced a 2026 winner of the Eccles Institute and Hay Festival Global Writer’s Award. Crooks jointly won the award with Vanessa Londoño for separate projects: each writer received £20,000, and up to a year’s writing residency at the British Library to develop their forthcoming books using the Library’s Americas collections. The award, in its fifteenth year of operations, is annually given to two writers whose manuscripts in progress pertain specifically to the Americas. In 2023, the award was won by T&T’s Ayanna Lloyd Banwo.
Opportunities for Writers
Bocas Academy, the comprehensive learning hub of the Bocas Lit Fest, has announced its offerings for January and February 2026. Prose writers of both fiction and nonfiction can flex their daily writing muscles with Jumpstart January, a full month of writing prompts designed to summon creativity. Prompts will be delivered via email, and include special words of encouragement and tailored exercises from award-winning Caribbean authors.
On Saturday 17 January, Nicholas Laughlin will lead an in-person session at Granderson Lab on visual
poetry, entitled Write it for the Eye. The three-hour session will focus on examples of visual and concrete poetry, culminating in a collaborative, hands-on experience in creating new work.
Caroline Mackenzie will lead prose writers through the art of writing humour and satire, in an online workshop entitled The Funny Thing Is, on Saturday 21 February. Mackenzie, author of One Year of Ugly, will explore the fundamentals of both genres, including ethical considerations, and tried and tested tips for giving your work in progress a comic edge. The workshop is suitable for fiction and non-fiction writers of all expertise levels.
For more information and to register for the January and February Bocas Academy
workshops, visit https://academy.bocaslitfest.com/.
Caribbean Bestsellers
Independent bookshop Paper Based (Instagram: @paperbasedbookshop) shares its top-selling
Caribbean titles for the past month:
1.The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, by Ingrid Persaud
2. Ever Since We Small, by Celeste Mohammed
3.Beyond Borders, by Arthur Lok Jack
4.Mixing Memory and Desire, by Lee Johnson
5.Palmyra, by Karen Barrow
