News from Authors

We're very excited to share that Shauna M. Morgan's debut collection Ground Provisions has been longlisted for the 2026 Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection in the 2026 Forward Prizes for Poetry.

Emily Zobel Marshall took part in a live radio show with Remember Oluwale and Chapel FM, supported by Leeds Beckett University. Emily was joined by Efua Boadu and Lara Rose from the Inscribe Readers & Writers Group, who read work created at her workshop earlier that day. Missed it? Don't worry! Our friends are Chapel FM caught the whole thing on camera. Watch the show in full below.

Timestamps

18:15 Efua Boadu
46:58 Emily Zobel Marshall
55:56 Lara Rose

Behold by Shara McCallum is out today! Moving between Jamaica and museums around the world, Shara McCallum gathers the voices and silences that shape our seeing: the labourers erased from the archive, the children left behind, the quiet watchers in the gallery.

Behold is a bold call to attention, a refusal of the shallow glance, and a powerful reminder of what becomes visible when we truly look.

British couple Hugh and Julia Pennington buy an old church to convert on a former cocoa plantation on a Caribbean island. When their estate agent fails to meet them at the airport, they accept a lift in a large American car from a charismatic local, Horatio. The couple are to become increasingly dependent on Horatio who ends up moving into their ‘servants’ quarters’ but remains an enigma. 

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.

Check out David Lambert reading fromThe House in Bacolet.

British couple Hugh and Julia Pennington buy an old church to convert on a former cocoa plantation on a Caribbean island. When their estate agent fails to meet them at the airport, they accept a lift in a large American car from a charismatic local, Horatio. The couple are to become increasingly dependent on Horatio who ends up moving into their ‘servants’ quarters’ but remains an enigma.

Diana McCaulay has written about how, on a visit to Auckland where she saw the good use put to a historic colonial building, such places, often built by the colonised and enslaved themselves, can appropriately be restored or memorialised to capture the role played by our ancestors (rather than the colonisers and slavers who designed them). She locates this discussion within the current debates about what to do with buildings damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Melissa:

For 10 December 2025, The Daily Poem chose John Robert Lee's "XIX: I often wonder whether the prodigal son", from After Poems, Psalms, for its featured poem. Check it out below.

Emeritus Professor Kenneth Ramchand has been awarded his country's highest honour, the Order of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Professor Ramchand told the Trinidad Express he was pleased to receive the prize, saying:

According to this week's Bocas Bulletin (2 August 2025), Look at You by Amanda Smyth topped the bookshop's bestsellers list. Congrats, Amanda!

Find the full list, along with more news from the Bocas LitFest, at The Daily Express.