The 2025 round of the region’s most coveted literary award, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, has opened for entries.
Sponsored by One Caribbean Media in Trinidad and Tobago and administered by the Bocas Lit Fest, the prize is now in its milestone 15th year.
It comes with a cash award of US$10,000 for the overall winner, and US$3,000 each for two other genre category winners. The OCM Bocas Prize, running since 2011, recognises the best books published each year by writers of Caribbean birth or citizenship.
Past winners have ranged from celebrated heavyweights like Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Jamaican Poet Laureate Olive Senior, and beloved novelist Earl Lovelace, to early-career writers like the 2024 winner, poet and memoirist Safiya Sinclair, author of How to Say Babylon.
The cross-genre prize is judged in the categories of poetry, fiction, and literary nonfiction. The 2025 prize is open to books published in the calendar year 2024. The overall winner will be selected from the three genre category winners and announced and featured at the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest, the Anglophone Caribbean’s biggest annual literary festival.
“For readers and writers across the Caribbean, the announcement of the OCM Bocas Prize is something to anticipate and celebrate,” says Nicholas Laughlin, festival and programme director of the Bocas Lit Fest. “Over the years, Caribbean writers have won numerous international awards, and our literary achievement is justly recognised around the world. But the OCM Bocas Prize is unique – sponsored, administered, and awarded at home in the region. It is our prize, and the Bocas Lit Fest is proud to be its organiser, just as we’re deeply grateful to One Caribbean media for their sponsorship and commitment over the past decade and a half.”
