NGC Bocas Lit Fest

The Bocas Lit Fest was held for the first time in 2011 – from Thursday, 28 April to Sunday, 1 May[23] – including readings, panel discussions, workshops, film screenings and art exhibitions.[24] Attracting 3,500 attendances over the four days.[25] the festival reflected its founder's aims "to promote literature and publishing in Trinidad and Tobago and the need for Caribbean writing to be celebrated everywhere".[26]

The scores of writers taking part in the 2012 festival, both locally based and from abroad,[27] included Fred D'Aguiar, Earl Lovelace, Vahni Capildeo, Chika Unigwe, Monique Roffey, Kenneth Ramchand, Mervyn Morris, Achy Obejas, Rabindranath Maharaj, George Lamming, professor of genetics Steve Jones, Merle Hodge, Rahul Bhattacharya, and Michael Anthony. The festival featured readings, discussions, performances, workshops, screenings of films based on Caribbean writing and music.[28]

In 2013, the South+Central NGC Bocas Lit Fest, scheduled to take place annually in November, was inaugurated.[29][30] In November 2014, NGC Bocas Lit Fest South was hosted by Southern Academy for the Performing Arts (SAPA) in San Fernando, birthplace of the writer Sam Selvon, and the festival commemorated the 20th anniversary of his death.[31]

In 2014, "Festival Radio" was inaugurated, to "bring the festival experience to listeners around the globe",[32] as well as attracting "a lot of attention on social media, spurred on in part by the active new media presence of the festival itself".[33]

The centrepiece of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest festival is the announcement at an award ceremony of the overall winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.[38] Entries for the prize are in the categories of fiction, non-fiction and poetry for a book by a Caribbean writer published in the previous year, with the overall winner being chosen by a panel of judges from the three genre winners. The winners have been: in 2011, Derek Walcott's poetry collection White Egrets, in 2012 Earl Lovelace's novel Is Just a Movie, in 2013 Monique Roffey's novel Archipelago, in 2014 Robert Antoni's novel As Flies to Whatless Boys, in 2015 Vladimir Lucien's Sounding Ground (poetry), in 2016 Olive Senior's The Pain Tree (fiction), in 2017 Kei Miller's Augustown (fiction), in 2018 Jennifer Rahim's Curfew Chronicles (fiction), and in 2019 Kevin Adonis Browne's High Mas (non-fiction).[39][40]

The Emerging Caribbean Writers Prize, formerly known as the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize, is jointly administered by the Bocas Lit Fest and the creative writing organisation Arvon, and is an award that allows an emerging Caribbean writer living and working in the Caribbean to devote time to developing or finishing a literary work in-progress, with support from an established writer as mentor.[41] Sponsored by the Hollick Family Charitable Trust for a period of three years (2013–15), and announced at the Bocas Lit Fest in 2012 by Sue Woodford-Hollick,[42] the prize was awarded to writers in three literary genres over consecutive years: fiction in 2013; non-fiction in 2014; and poetry in 2015.[43][44] The first winner in 2013, for fiction, was Barbara Jenkins of Trinidad & Tobago.[45] The winner in 2014, for non-fiction, was Jamaican Diana McCaulay.[46] In 2015, the prize was awarded to poet Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné.[41]

The Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters (named after the influential producer of the BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices that ran from 1943 to 1958) was inaugurated at the 2013 NGC Bocas Lit Fest,[47] as an "annual lifetime achievement award to recognise service to Caribbean literature by editors, publishers, critics, broadcasters, and others".[47][48] In 2013 the award was made to John La Rose (posthumously) and Sarah White of New Beacon Books.[49][50] In 2014, the award was jointly won by Professors Kenneth Ramchand and Gordon Rohlehr.[51] The 2015 recipient was Margaret Busby.[52][53][54] The 2016 award went to Jeremy Poynting of Peepal Tree Press.[55][56] In 2017 the award went to Joan Dayal, the owner of one of Trinidad and Tobago's leading independent bookshops, Paperbased Book Store.[57] The 2018 honor went to Anne Walmsley, previously an editor and publisher for Longman Caribbean and Africa, who produced two key Caribbean literature anthologies: The Sun’s Eye and Facing the Sea.[58]

The Bocas Lit Fest additionally administers the Burt Award sponsored by CODE (Canadian Organization for Development Through Education)[59] for Caribbean authors of literature for young adults, launched in 2013.[47]

The first-place winner in 2014 was A-dZiko Gegele, in second place was Joanne Hillhouse and in third place Colleen Smith-Dennis.[60][61] In 2015, first prize went to Imam Baksh. In second place was Diana McCaulay and third was Lynn Joseph.[62] The 2016 prize winner was debut novelist Tamika Gibson, with Florenz Webbe Maxwell of Bermuda second, and Danielle Y. C. McClean in third place.[63] The 2017 winner was Viviana Prado-Núñez (Puerto Rico/USA), with Kevin Jared Hosein (Trinidad & Tobago) as runner-up, and Lisa Allen-Agostini (Trinidad & Tobago) in third place.[64]

Launched in 2012[65] was the Caribbean Literature Action Group (CALAG),[66] a new partnership between the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, the British Council,[67] and Commonwealth Writers, aimed at supporting the development of Caribbean writing and publishing.[68][69] Public initiatives of the project use the "CaribLit" brand.[70]