A monthly roundup of news about Caribbean books and writers, presented by the Bocas Lit Fest.
New Releases
Starry Starry Night (Book*hug Press) by Shani Mootoo, the new novel by the acclaimed Irish-Trinidadian-Canadian author, takes us to Trinidad in the 1960s, the decade of Independence — equally formative years for Anju Ghoshal, Mootoo’s surrogate in this work of autofiction. As a new nation struggles to emerge into its postcolonial identity, so does Anju struggle with facts and questions of family, class, and gender. Personal recollection intermingles with collective history in this lushly, lyrically written account of childhood and what comes after, for better or worse.
A Ruin, Great and Free (Blackstone) by Cadwell Turnbull is the third and final volume in the US Virgin Islands writer’s Convergence Saga, which began with No Gods, No Monsters and continued in We Are the Crisis. Set in a world where monsters of myth and legend reveal their existence to the world with calamitous results, the trilogy weaves a gripping story about secrets, belonging, and the ways we contend with the strangeness of others. As this final instalment opens, a secret community of monsters have found sanctuary from human persecution, but fear, hatred, and conflict loom. The parallels to the real world are clear, utterly up-to-the-minute, and raise the novel’s ethical stakes.
After Poems, Psalms (Peepal Tree Press) by St. Lucian poet John Robert Lee offers an energetic meditation on the meaning of Christian faith in a postcolonial, post-imperial Caribbean, where religion was deeply implicated in historical enslavement and oppression. Starting with extracts from biblical psalms, Lee — author of numerous books — wrestles with Christianity’s legacies and lessons, finding his way to an honest rejoicing in the beauty of the St. Lucian landscapes, personal relationships, and the creative potential of language itself. Here, creation is resistance and, sometimes, profound solace.
Ground Provisions (Peepal Tree Press), the debut book of poems by Jamaica-born, US-based Shauna Morgan, uses a deep engagement with the natural world to grapple with the making and remaking of uprooted and transplanted selves. These poems “interrogate power, follow the desire for freedom, explore the necessity of ancestral memory, and answer the crucial need to touch the earth and each other,” through changing landscapes and unfolding memories. Questions about legacy — individual and collective — and what can and cannot be shared across generations, are at the heart of Morgan’s poetic journey.
Seabeast (Four Way Books), the fifth full-length book of poems by Guyanese-American Rajiv Mohabir, takes the form of a bestiary, a catalogue of creatures — specifically, of whale species. The complicated, sometimes violent, and occasionally heartbreaking relations between the human and the nonhuman are the meat of these poems, which journey between the strange and the familiar. Mohabir reminds the reader that, like humans, whales enjoy rich social lives, are restless wanderers, and have languages — and even songs — of their own. But there is also unfathomable mystery in their submarine lives, and the cruelty inflicted upon these creatures — our air-breathing, warm-blooded distant cousins — is not so different from the cruelties we inflict upon our fellow Homo sapiens.
The Boy Kingdom/El Reino de los Varones (Beacon Press) by Cuban-American Achy Obejas collects a sequence of prose poems, in both English and Spanish, meditating on childhood, parenthood, and the complexities of family. The “Boy Kingdom” of the title refers to the emotional world the author shares with her two sons — similar in many ways to any family dynamic, but also unique in Obejas’s particular exploration of motherhood as a bilingual Jewish Cuban-American lesbian. The territory of these pieces ranges from memories of her own childhood in Cuba and her relationship to her own parents to everyday domestic conflicts and comforts, and how these all refract through the prism of language.
Silence and Resistance: Memoir of a Girlhood in Haiti (Wordeee) by Haitian Monique Clesca delves into family secrets, historical trauma, and the painful necessity of confronting the most difficult truths. This haunting memoir orbits two catastrophes: the 2010 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and shattered many Haitians’ fragile sense of stability, and Clesca’s discovery of an awful, violent secret about her father. Silence and Resistance charts the author’s attempts to reckon with these ruptures in her own identity, and find some version of personal healing.
In Defense of Dabbling: The Brilliance of Being a Total Amateur (Broadleaf Books) by Karen Walrond is the Trinidad-born writer and leadership coach’s third book. Like its predecessors, it hovers pleasingly between the genres of personal essay and self-help — in this case, exploring the value of being an “intentional amateur.” Curiosity, mindfulness, self- compassion, play, zone-stretching, connection, and awe are the attributes Walrond pursues as she throws herself into passionate and deliberately unremunerative hobbies like pottery, photography, surfing, and playing the piano. She asks: what joy might we find if we simply started doing the things we love?
Awards and Prizes
Heirloom, the debut book by St. Lucian author Catherine-Esther Cowie, has been shortlisted for 2025 T.S. Eliot Prize, one of the most prestigious annual awards for poetry. Now in its 29th year, the prize comes with an award of £1,500 for each shortlisted poet and £25,000 for the winner. The award ceremony will take place in London on 19 January, 2026.
T&T author Rajiv Ramkhalawan has been shortlisted for the 2025 Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize for Fiction. Intended to “celebrate the most exciting new voices in life writing, poetry, and fiction from around the world,” the Queen Mary Wasafiri New WritingPrizes, now in their 16th year, will announce the winners on 30 October at a ceremony in London. The winners in each genre category will receive a £1,000 cash prize. Ramkhalawan was previously a 2022 Bocas Emerging Writers Fellow for fiction, and his debut chapbook The Birthday Cake was published in 2024 by Peekash Press.
The 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize remains open for entries, until 1 November, 2025. Any citizen of a Commonwealth country is eligible to enter, with an original piece of unpublished short fiction, from 2,000 to 5,000 words in length. After selecting a shortlist of around 25 entries, the judges will name winners from five regions (including the Caribbean), who will each receive £2,500; followed by an overall winner, who will receive £5,000. To submit an entry, or for further information, visit commonwealthfoundation.com/short-story-prize.
Opportunities for writers
Bringing life to your carefully written, painstakingly edited pieces can be a daunting prospect. How do you stand before an expectant audience, meet their collective gaze, and deliver all the passion and certainty of your short stories, poems, and essays? Dispel your doubts in a day-long, hands-on Bocas Academy “Page to Stage” workshop with veteran thespians Patti-Anne Ali and Nickolai Salcedo, who combine decades of stage, film, and performance experience.
Saturday 8 November, 2025, 10 am to 3 pm, at The Writers Centre, 14 Alcazar Street, St. Clair. Registration fee $500. For more information, visit academy.bocaslitfest.com/event/performance-workshop-page-to-stage-with-patti-anne-ali-and-nickolai-salcedo
Caribbean Bestsellers
Independent bookshop Paper Based (Instagram: @paperbasedbookshop) shares its top-selling
Caribbean titles for the past month:
1.Love Forms, by Claire Adam
2.Writing For Our Lives: A Caribbean Climate Justice Anthology, ed. Diana McCaulay and
Shivanee Ramlochan
3.The Village of One, by Richard Charan
4.Palmyra, by Karen Barrow
5.Towns and Villages of Trinidad and Tobago, by Michael Anthony
