Rashad Hosein has won the 2022 NGC Bocas Youth Writer Award, which comes with a cash prize of TT $5,000, sponsored by the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited. The announcement was made on Saturday 7 January at an award ceremony honouring the young finalists for the award, hosted at The Writer’s Centre by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
The 24-year old author was selected as the winner from four finalists, with his short fictional work “Saga”. Hosein has already established himself as an writer to watch, after winning the John Steinbeck Award for Fiction last year from Reed Magazine. He has also been a finalist for the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Caribbean Writers, was longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, and shortlisted twice for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2019 and 2021.
Launched in 2021, the NGC Bocas Youth Writer Award recognises and celebrates young authors of T&T birth or citizenship, aged 25 and younger.
The 2022 judging panel, chaired by award-winning author Lisa Allen-Agostini, also included performing artist Gerelle Forbes, media expert and influencer Danielle “DJ Dani” Parkinson, spoken word artist Derron Sandy, and author Kevin Jared Hosein.
“Unanimously, we found [Rashad Hosein’s] writing on par with the work of writers of much greater age,” said Allen-Agostini at the award ceremony. “His accomplished résumé is a testament to both his talent and his tenacity…. I guarantee this is not the last time you will hear his name calling in a forum like this.”
“From the beginning, one of the Bocas Lit Fest’s core objectives has been to search out, support, and promote new writing talent,” says Nicholas Laughlin, the literary NGO’s festival and programme director. “It’s the most exciting and rewarding part of our work. Prizes like this one are immensely valuable, not just for the motivation of the reward, but because they bring a range of writers to wider attention. The 2022 NGC Bocas Youth Writer Award finalists and nominees include several already accomplished budding authors who will help shape T&T’s literary landscape in years to come.”
For more information about the Award, visit https://www.bocaslitfest.com/youth/writeraward/
The NGC Bocas Youth Writer Award was created by the Bocas Lit Fest and is sponsored by the National Gas Company to identify and celebrate young writers across a broad spectrum of literary genres, including poetry, playwriting, fiction, creative non-fiction, journalism, scriptwriting, spoken word, blog writing, and song lyrics.
