The judges for the 2026 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature have announced the shortlists in the three genre categories, which includes Ground Provisions by Shauna M. Morgan.
Poetry
- Heirloom, by Catherine-Esther Cowie (Carcanet Press)
- Dante’s Inferno, by Lorna Goodison (Carcanet Press)
- The World After Rain: Anne’s Poem, by Canisia Lubrin (McClelland & Stewart)
- Ground Provisions, by Shauna M. Morgan (Peepal Tree Press)
- The Boy Kingdom, by Achy Obejas (Beacon Press)
Fiction
- Tall Is Her Body, by Robert de la Chevotière (Erewhon Books)
- The Jamaica Kollection of the Shante Dream Arkive: being dreamity, algoriddims, chants & riffs, by Marcia Douglas (New Directions)
- Ibis, by Justin Haynes (Overlook Press)
- Paradise Once, by Olive Senior (Akashic Books)
- A Different Hurricane, by H. Nigel Thomas (Dundurn Press)
Nonfiction
- The Possibility of Tenderness: A Jamaican Memoir of Plants and Dreams, by Jason Allen-Paisant (Hutchinson Heinemann)
- A Sense of Arrival, by Kevin Adonis Browne (Duke University Press)
- Silence and Resistance: Memoir of a Girlhood in Haiti, by Monique Clesca (Riverchild Literary Press)
- The Snag: A Mother, a Forest, and Wild Grief, by Tessa McWatt (Random House Canada/Scribe UK)
- Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival, by Maria Pinto (University of North Carolina Press)
In the second stage of judging for the 2026 OCM Bocas Prize, the winners in the three genre categories will be announced on 25 March. These will go on to compete for the overall Prize of US$10,000, to be announced on Saturday 2 May, during the 16th annual Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain.
About the Prize
The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is an annual award for literary books by Caribbean writers, first presented in 2011. Books are judged in three categories: poetry; fiction — both novels and collections of short stories; and literary nonfiction — including books of essays, biography and autobiography, history, current affairs, travel, and other genres, which demonstrate literary qualities and use literary techniques, regardless of subject matter.
There is a panel of three judges for each genre category, who determine category shortlists and winners.
The three category winners are then judged by a panel of four judges — consisting of the chairs of the category panels and the prize chair — who determine the overall winner.
The author of the book judged the overall winner will receive an award of US$10,000. The other category winners will receive US$3,000
