Bocas launches UK tour this month

Two dozen writers from the Caribbean and the diaspora will be front and centre as the NGC Bocas Lit Fest embarks on its maiden UK tour.

The Bocas tour will visit five cities across the UK between October 26 and November 3 to showcase the diversity of contemporary Caribbean literature.

It will feature authors of all genres, including some recent prizewinners such as the last two winners of the OCM Bocas Prize, alongside authors of some of 2022’s most-anticipated books.

Since its inaugural festival in 2011, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, TT’s annual literary festival has gained an international reputation as the leading annual showcase for Caribbean literature and writers.

The Bocas UK Tour 2022, originally planned to mark the festival’s 10th anniversary in 2021, was postponed due to the spread of covid19.

The tour begins on October 26 in Leicester and continues with events in Norwich at the National Centre for Writing. It then heads to Leeds, at the Workshop Theatre, after which it will conclude on November 3 at the Belfast International Art Festival.

The main event, on October 29, will be held at the British Library in London. The grand finale will be a day of readings, discussions and performances, tackling themes from personal and collective histories, to fraught questions about belonging and the meaning of home.

British audiences will meet and hear from 2022 OCM Bocas Prize winner Celeste Mohammed of TT, with her debut book of fiction Pleasantview.

Winner of the 2021 Bocas Prize from St Lucia Canisia Lubrin will also be part of the tour. Lubrin's poetry collection The Dyzgraphxst has won numerous accolades in the Caribbean and North America, including the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize, a Windham-Campbell Prize and the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry.

Acclaimed Barbadian speculative fiction writer Karen Lord, poet Celia Sorhaindo of Dominica are also included, as well as TT authors Barbara Jenkins and Ira Mathur, with their newly published memoirs, The Stranger Who Was Myself and Love the Dark Days respectively.

UK-based Caribbean writers include Costa Book Award winners Monique Roffey and Ingrid Persaud, Jhalak Prize winner Jacob Ross, Forward Prize-shortlisted Anthony Joseph and 2022 Bocas poetry winner Jason Allen-Paisant.

Bocas Lit Fest founder Marina Salandy-Brown, a Newsday columnist, said, “When the careers of so many of our most important writers have been made in Britain and continue to be, and given that it has been a place of memory, reference and imagination for so many of our writers for so long, bringing our writers from the Caribbean back to Britain felt like a fitting thing to do.”

The tour includes ticketed events in London, Norwich and Belfast. There will also be admission-free events in Leicester and Leeds. The British Library programme will be available for live streaming, allowing audiences at home in the Caribbean to tune in.

The full programme of events is available HERE.