Augustown, the third novel by Jamaican writer Kei Miller, has been named the winner of the 2017 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the most prestigious international award for Caribbean writing. The announcement was made by the chief judge of the prize, Prof Edward Baugh, at a ceremony last night in Port-of-Spain’s historic Old Fire Station.
The OCM Bocas Prize event was a highlight of the 2017 NGC Bocas Lit Fest, the largest literary festival in the English-speaking Caribbean. Sponsored by One Caribbean Media, the prize comes with an award of US$10,000.
This was Miller’s second time at the OCM Bocas Prize ceremony, as he was previously named the non-fiction category winner and shortlisted for the overall prize in 2014, with his essay collection Writing Down the Vision.
Miller’s novel Augustown was chosen by the judges from a shortlist of three books, made up of the genre category winners of the 2017 prize. The poetry winner was Jamaican Safiya Sinclair, for her debut book Cannibal, and the non-fiction winner was writer/historian Angelo Bissessarsingh, for his twin volumes Virtual Glimpses into the Past/A Walk Back in Time: Snapshots of the History of Trinidad and Tobago. They each received an award of US$3,000. Bissessarsingh’s award was accepted by his mother, Carmen.
Based in the United Kingdom, where he is professor of Creative Writing at the University of Exeter, Miller is the youngest winner of the OCM Bocas Prize to date, and the second Jamaican. A prolific author, he has previously published two other novels, a collection of short stories, and four collections of poems, most recently The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, winner of the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Poetry Collection.
Augustown is a historical epic set in a deprived community on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica’s capital. Jumping between the 1980s and the early 20th century, it tackles complexities of class, ethnicity, religion and language. The OCM Bocas Prize judges describe it as “a spell-binding novel written in simple, well limned, imagistic prose. It’s a novel that’s realistic-a realism grounded in history-and magic-realist”.
In addition to Prof Baugh, the final judging panel for the prize included UK-based Guyanese writer David Dabydeen, academic Susheila Nasta, and Jamaican editor Kim Robinson-Walcott.
The title sponsor of the 2017 festival was the National Gas Company of T&T, First Citizens (the lead sponsor), and One Caribbean Media and the Ministry of Community Development, while Culture and the Arts are main sponsors. Other sponsors were the Massy Foundation and UWI. The 2017 NGC Bocas Lit Fest ran from April 26-30.
