The 2022 Recipients of The Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters are Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge
They are being recognised for their work over more than two decades as creative writing teachers and mentors, in particular through the influential Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop. Aiyejina and Hodge led the residential workshop from its founding in 2000, guiding and mentoring participants from across the Caribbean, many of whom have gone on not only to be published, but acclaimed for their books. In addition, Aiyejina was the founder of the creative writing MFA (Master of Fine Arts) programme at the University of the West Indies’ St. Augustine campus, the first degree-granting programme in creative writing in the Anglophone Caribbean.
Born in Nigeria and resident in Trinidad and Tobago since 1989, Funso Aiyejina is a celebrated poet, short story writer, playwright, and scholar — a former Dean of Humanities and Education, and current professor emeritus at UWI, St. Augustine. He started his teaching career at Obafemi Awolowo University in Nigeria, and was lecturer and later professor at UWI from 1990 to 2014. Aiyejina won the 2000 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in the Africa region for his short fiction collection The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories.
As a scholar, he is especially well known for his work on Earl Lovelace, including a biography and film.
A founding board member and former deputy festival director of the Bocas Lit Fest, Aiyejina retired from this role in 2020.
Lauded as one of the first Black Caribbean women to publish a major work of fiction — her classic 1970 novel Crick Crack, Monkey — Merle Hodge is a beloved fiction writer, literary critic, social and cultural activist, and retired lecturer in the Faculty of Humanities and Education at UWI, St Augustine. During her UWI career across two campuses, she taught French, West Indian and African Diaspora Literature, and Creative Writing even before the founding of the MFA programme.
Both Aiyejina and Hodge continue to write and publish — each has published a new book in the past two years — but the Bocas Henry Swanzy Award recognises their crucial parallel work as teachers and mentors of younger authors, and their dedication to nurturing a generation of writers grounded in Caribbean literary tradition and language, exploring the region’s social complexities.
Their influence can be gauged not only in the testimony of their former students and mentees, but in the catalogue of works published and prizes won. Alumni of the Cropper Foundation Writers’ Workshop include no fewer than four winners of the OCM Bocas Prize alone — Tiphanie Yanique for fiction and poetry, Kei Miller for fiction and non-fiction, Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné for poetry, and Andre Bagoo for non-fiction — in addition to other regional and international awards.
Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge’s exemplary guidance, and their dedication as teachers, mentors, and champions of fresh talent, continue to fuel the Caribbean’s literary potential.
The 2022 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award will be formally presented to Funso Aiyejina and Merle Hodge in a virtual event on 30 April, part of the 2022 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
About the Award
About the AwardIn 2013, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest inaugurated a new annual lifetime achievement award to recognise service to Caribbean literature by editors, publishers, critics, broadcasters, and others. The Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters is named for the late BBC World Service radio producer (1915–2004) who created a landmark platform for Caribbean writing in the 1940s and 50s through the Caribbean Voices programme, which broadcast fiction and poems by West Indian writers across the region.
The Bocas Lit Fest founded the award to honour and celebrate the contributions of the editors, broadcasters, publishers, critics, and others who have shaped the evolution of Caribbean literature behind the scenes. Recipients are chosen by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest organising committee.
