On Monday, the judges announced the winners in the three categories of the OCM Bocas Prize. And because I am aware that there are some folks involved with the prize and the festival who are genuine about promoting and supporting Caribbean literature and Caribbean writers, I've chosen to play nice. So here's my list of nice genuine thoughts about the three writers on the shortlist. (I may overuse the word genuine, but bear with me I'm a bit of a gusher.)
--I am genuinely happy to see that Derek Walcott is still around in superb writing form to be a genuine contender for the first Caribbean prize of this nature.
--I am genuinely happy to see that a book I gushed about on this blog has been chosen as one of the top three. And I hope the writer, Edwidge Danticat, shows up at the festival to read from it.
--I genuinely hope that Tiphanie Yanique gets to finally meet Derek Walcott's daughter, UWI lecturer and writer Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw, since the two of them (according to Yanique) are "clearly kindred writers to each other."