A monthly roundup of news about Caribbean books and writers, presented by the Bocas Lit Fest.
Welcome to the latest installment of the Bocas Book Bulletin, a monthly roundup of Caribbean literary news, curated by the Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival, and published in the Sunday Express.
2025 publishing preview
Caribbean books continue to be prominently on the radar of international publishers’ trends, with much-awaited releases in poetry, fiction, and non-fiction scheduled for publication throughout the year. Independent, dedicated Caribbean presses, such as Peepal Tree, have also unveiled a promising roster of titles from well-established and emerging talents alike.
January
Another Man in the Street (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Caryl Phillips homes in on a Caribbean migrant’s experience in 1960s London. The novel follows his emotional intimacies generated in that time, and how they persist into modernity.
Three Leaves, Three Roots: Poems on the Haiti-Congo Story (Beacon Press) by Danielle Legros Georges combines poetry, archival material, letters, and interview excerpts to creatively construct the Haitian migratory movement to Congo from 1960 to 1975.
Good Dirt (Ballantine Books) by Charmaine Wilkerson plunges a prominent Black family into chaos following a childhood tragedy. This second novel from Wilkerson, author of the popular debut Black Cake, blends historical and contemporary settings.
February
Casualties of Truth (Grove Atlantic) by Lauren Francis-Sharma is a fast-paced literary thriller, cycling between Johannesburg, South Africa and Washington, DC, examining the possibilities of redemption alongside the past’s ever-present systemic violence.
Ibis (The Overlook Press) by Justin Haynes is a debut novel, combining elements of criminality and magical possibility to reflect on a Venezuelan migrant girl’s fate in the coastal Trinidadian village of New Felicity.
A House for Miss Pauline (Hachette) by Diana McCaulay centres a singular ninety-nine-year-old woman as its protagonist. The eponymous Miss Pauline carries a lifetime of secrets, embedded in the very bricks of her home.
March
A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl (Zibby Books) by Nanda Reddy straddles Miami and Guyana in a plotline that exhumes the ghosts of the past, revealing how they impact the protagonist attempting to secure a safer future.
The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican Memoir of Plants and Dreams (Hutchinson Heinemann) by Jason Allen-Paisant narrates the author’s personal history with the green landscapes of his homeland Jamaica, enmeshed in the wisdoms of his family’s maternal line.
April
The Beginning of a Journey (Peepal Tree Press) by Earl Lovelace assembles poems from the veteran writer’s early career, in language that confirms Lovelace’s attentions to the Caribbean landscape as much as the enduring quality of human connections.
The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive: being dreamity, algoriddims, chants & riffs (New Directions Publishing) by Marcia Douglas presents Jamaica in non-linear, hybrid and interlocking narrative forms, drawing on myth, dreaming, and history.
My Own Dear People (Akashic Books) by Dwight Thompson presents an island society beset by rampant toxic masculinities, and one young man’s quest to liberate himself from its shameful associations, while atoning for his complicity in past crimes.
Look At You (Peepal Tree Press) by Amanda Smyth focuses on the turbulent coming-of-age story of a young Caribbean girl whose history and legacy straddles Trinidad and England, encompassing gender expectations, identity crises, and societal pressures.
June
Love Forms (Faber & Faber) by Claire Adam follows a Trinidadian mother’s emotionally fraught journey towards reconnection with the daughter she gave up in Venezuela at birth, posing existential considerations on the very nature of forgiveness itself.
How to be UnMothered: A Trinidadian Memoir (Restless Books) by Camille U. Adams troubles the supposed sanctity of the bond between a mother and child, drawing on the author’s own upbringing in Trinidad, asking difficult questions about love and trauma.
Later in 2025
The Grand Paloma Resort (Ballantine Books) by Cleyvis Natera is set in the titular Grand Paloma Resort, a Dominican Republic luxury hotel that caters to its clients’ wildest desires. Natera’s novel reveals the underpinnings of such an idyllic setup, in captivating detail.
After Poems, Psalms (Peepal Tree Press) by John Robert Lee showcases the prolific poet’s capacity to summon verses towards healing, redemption, and grace. Rooted in Christian allegory, the work is pan-Caribbean in nature.
2025 Bocas Lit Fest
The 15th Bocas Lit Fest — the Anglophone Caribbean’s biggest literary festival — will run from 1 to 4 May, 2025, with a programme celebrating 15 years of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. As always, audiences can expect a packed programme of readings, discussions, performances, workshops, and more, with a lineup of dozens of authors and speakers. The full schedule will be announced in March.
Vision Board Workshop for Writers and Creatives
The Bocas Academy’s first offering of 2025 is an in-person Vision Board Workshop session with
artist, editor, and writer Neala Luna, to be held at The Writers Centre on Saturday 11 2025. The two-hour workshop is tailored to guiding participants in clarifying and setting their creative goals for the new year, and is suitable for all skill levels.
For more information and to register, visit https://academy.bocaslitfest.com/event/vision-board-workshop-for-writers-with-neala-luna/
Paper Based Bookshop (Instagram: @paperbasedbookshop) shares its top-selling Caribbean titles for 2024, sorted by four genres:
Poetry
1. The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, by Nicole Sealey
2. Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems, by Dionne Brand
3. Sonnets for Albert, by Anthony Joseph
4. The Chaos, by Derron Sandy
5. Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting, by Shivanee Ramlochan
6. Self-Portrait as Othello, by Jason Allen-Paisant
Biography, Autobiography, Memoir
1. Manning: Faith & Vision, by Bridget Brereton
2. How to Say Babylon, by Safiya Sinclair
3. Lara: The England Chronicles, by Brian Lara
4. Love the Dark Days, by Ira Mathur
5. Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside, by Marchelle Farrell
6. Son of Grace: Frank Worrell — A Biography, by Vaneisa Baksh
Non-Fiction
1. A Literary Friendship: Selected Notes on the Kamau Brathwaite, Gordon Rohlehr Correspondence, by Gordon Rohlehr
2. A Different Energy: Women in Caribbean Oil and Gas, by Celeste Mohammed
3. A History of Modern Trinidad 1783–1962, by Bridget Brereton
4. The Illustrated Story of Pan: Second Edition, by Kim Johnson
5. Police Dogs of Trinidad and Tobago: A 70-Year History, by Debbie Jacob
6. The Railways of Trinidad, by Glen Beadon and Roger Darsley
Fiction
1. The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, by Ingrid Persaud
2. Hungry Ghosts, by Kevin Jared Hosein
3. When We Were Birds, by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
4. Passiontide, by Monique Roffey
5. The Bread the Devil Knead, by Lisa Allen-Agostini
6. Palmyra, by Karen Barrow
