# OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature

OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, inaugurated in 2011 by the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, is an annual literary award for books by Caribbean writers published in the previous year. It is the only prize in the region that is open to works of different literary genres by writers of Caribbean birth or citizenship.
The prize award is US$10,000 and is sponsored by One Caribbean Media. The shortlisted nominees are awarded $3,000. Books may be entered in three categories: poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction. The judges select the best book in each genre category, which three books form the shortlist for the prize, from which the overall winner is then chosen. The overall winner of the prize is announced at the NGC Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

## Winners and longlisted nominees

| Year | Winner | Work | Longlisted nominees |
| 2011 | Derek Walcott | White Egrets (poetry) | Tiphanie Yanique, How to Escape a Leper Colony (fiction, winner) Myriam J. A. Chancy, The Loneliness of Angels (fiction) Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo (fiction) Rabindranath Maharaj, The Amazing Absorbing Boy (fiction) Edwidge Danticat, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (non-fiction, winner) Andre Alexis, Beauty and Sadness (non-fiction) V.S. Naipaul, The Masque of Africa (non-fiction) Kamau Brathwaite, Elegguas (poetry) Kei Miller, A Light Song of Light (poetry) |
| 2012 | Earl Lovelace | Is Just a Movie (fiction) | Tessa McWatt, Vital Signs (fiction) Keith Jardim, Near Open Water (fiction) Merle Collins, The Ladies are Upstairs (fiction) Fawzia Kane, Tantie Diablesse (poetry) Loretta Collins Klobah, The Twelve-Foot Neon Woman (poetry, winner) Shara McCallum, This Strange Land (poetry) Basil Ince, Olympian (non-fiction) Caryl Phillips, Colour Me English (non-fiction) Godfrey Smith, George Price: A Life Revealed (non-fiction, winner) |
| 2013 | Monique Roffey | Archipelago (fiction) | Vahni Capildeo, Dark and Unaccustomed Words (poetry) Kendel Hippolyte, Fault Lines (poetry, winner) Anthony Kellman, South Eastern Stages (poetry) Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her (fiction) Lawrence Scott, Light Falling on Bamboo (fiction) Anthony C. Winkler, God Carlos (fiction) Jemima Pierre, The Predicament of Blackness: Postcolonial Ghana and the Politics of Race (non-fiction) Rupert Roopnarine, The Sky’s Wild Noise: Selected Essays (non-fiction, winner) Andrea Stuart, Sugar in the Blood: A Family’s Story of Slavery and Empire (non-fiction) |
| 2014 | Robert Antoni | As Flies to Whatless Boys (fiction) | Edward Baugh, Black Sand: New and Collected Poems (poetry) Malika Booker, Pepper Seed (poetry) Lorna Goodison, Oracabessa (poetry, winner) Roger Robinson, The Butterfly Hotel (poetry) Edwidge Danticat, Claire of the Sea Light (fiction) Kerry Young, Gloria (fiction) Gaiutra Bahadur, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture (non-fiction) Carole Boyce Davies, Caribbean Spaces: Escapes from Twilight Zones (non-fiction) Kei Miller, Writing Down the Vision: Essays and Prophecies (non-fiction, winner) |
| 2015 | Vladimir Lucien | Sounding Ground (poetry) | Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (fiction, winner) Monique Roffey, House of Ashes (fiction) Tiphanie Yanique, Land of Love and Drowning (fiction) Olive Senior, Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal (non-fiction, winner) Elizabeth Nunez, Not for Everyday Use (non-fiction) Dorbrene E. O'Marde, King Short Shirt: Nobody Go Run Me (non-fiction) Kei Miller, The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion (poetry) Tanya Shirley, The Merchant of Feathers (poetry) |
| 2016 | Olive Senior | The Pain Tree (fiction) | Tiphanie Yanique, Wife (poetry, winner) Andre Bagoo, Burn (poetry) Colin Channer, Providential (poetry) Andre Alexis, Fifteen Dogs (fiction) Sharon Millar, The Whale House and Other Stories (fiction) Jacqueline Bishop, The Gymnast and Other Positions (non-fiction, winner) Austin Clarke, ’Membering (non-fiction) Jenny M. Jemmot, Ties That Bind: The Black Family in Post-Slavery Jamaica, 1834–1882 (non-fiction) |
| 2017 | Kei Miller | Augustown (fiction) | Marcia Douglas, The Marvelous Equations of the Dread (fiction) Kevin Jared Hosein, The Repenters (fiction) Safiya Sinclair, Cannibal (poetry, winner) Ishion Hutchinson, House of Lord and Commons (poetry) Ann-Margaret Lim, Kingston Buttercup (poetry) Angelo Bissessarsingh, Virtual Glimpses into the Past (non-fiction, winner) Hilary Beckles, The First Black Slave Society (non-fiction) Colin Palmer, Inward Yearnings (non-fiction) |
| 2018 | Jennifer Rahim | Curfew Chronicles (fiction) | Helen Klonaris, If I Had the Wings (fiction) Jacob Ross, Tell No-One About This (fiction) Shara McCallum, Madwoman (poetry, winner) Sonia Farmer, Infidelities (poetry) Kamau Brathwaite, Liviticus (poetry) No non-fiction titles were selected this year. |
| 2019 | Kevin Adonis Browne | High Mas (non-fiction) | Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, Doe Songs (poetry, winner) Loretta Collins Klobah, Ricantations (poetry) Richard Georges, Giant (poetry) Dionne Brand, Theory (fiction) Robert Antoni, Cut Guavas (fiction) Anthony Joseph, Kitch (fiction) Dionne Brand, Theory (fiction, winner) Selwyn R. Cudjoe, The Slave Master of Trinidad: William Hardin Burnley and the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World (non-fiction) Peter A. Roberts, A Response to Enslavement: Playing Their Way to Virtue (non-fiction) |
| 2020 | Richard Georges | Epiphaneia (poetry) | Lauren K. Alleyne, Honeyfish (poetry) Vahni Capildeo, Skin Can Hold (poetry) Edwidge Danticat, Everything Inside (fiction, winner) Curdella Forbes, A Tall History of Sugar (fiction) Sara Collins, The Confessions of Frannie Langton Tessa McWatt, Shame on Me (non-fiction, winner) Erna Brodber, Moments of Cooperation and Incorporation: African American and African Jamaican Connections, 1782–1996 (non-fiction) Aaron Kamugisha, Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition (non-fiction) |
| 2021 | Canisia Lubrin | The Dyzgraphxst (poetry) | Celia Sorhaindo, Guabancex (poetry) Mervyn Taylor, Country of Warm Snow (poetry) Maisy Card, These Ghosts Are Family (fiction, winner) Ingrid Persaud, Love After Love (fiction) Monique Roffey, The Mermaid of Black Conch (fiction) Andre Bagoo, The Undiscovered Country (non-fiction, winner) Katherine Agyemaa Agard, of colour (non-fiction) Gordon Rohlehr, Musings, Mazes, Muses, Margins (non-fiction) |
| 2022 | Celeste Mohammed | Pleasantview (fiction) | Jason Allen-Paisant, Thinking with Trees (poetry, winner) Desiree C. Bailey, What Noise Against the Cane (poetry) Monica Minott, Zion Roses (poetry) Myriam J. A. Chancy, What Storm, What Thunder (fiction) Cherie Jones, How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House (fiction) Ada Ferrer, Cuba: An American History (non-fiction) Kei Miller, Things I Have Withheld (non-fiction, winner) Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime and Dreams Deferred (non-fiction) |
| 2023 | Ayanna Lloyd Banwo | When We Were Birds (fiction) | Michael Fraser, The Day-Breakers (poetry) Anthony Joseph, Sonnets for Albert (poetry, winner) Pamela Mordecai, de book of Joseph (poetry) Marlon James, Moon Witch, Spider King (fiction) Jasmine Sealy, The Island of Forgetting (fiction) Ira Mathur, Love the Dark Days (non-fiction, winner) Patricia Joan Saunders, Buyers Beware: Insurgency and Consumption in Caribbean Popular Culture (non-fiction) Godfrey Smith, Diary of a Recovering Politician by Godfrey Smith (non-fiction) |
| 2024 | Safiya Sinclair | How to Say Babylon (non-fiction) | Jason Allen-Paisant, Self-Portrait as Othello (poetry) Ishion Hutchinson, School of Instructions (poetry) Nicole Sealey, The Fergusion Report: An Erasure (poetry, winner) Merle Collins, Ocean Stirrings (fiction) Kevin Jared Hosein, Hungry Ghosts (fiction, winner) Juliana Lamy, You Were Watching from the Sand (fiction) Myriam J. A. Chancy, Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters (non-fiction) Christopher Laird, Equal to Mystery (non-fiction) Safiya Sinclair, How to Say Babylon (non-fiction, winner) |