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  Caribbean Writers in the Running and the Road Is Talking Ian Williams April marks the beginning of Book Award season, and this week has seen significant prize announcements from 3 different Canadian awards, impacting Caribbean authors and poets. The $130,000 Griffin Poetry Prize , announced yesterday morning in Toronto, unveiled its 2024 shortlist. This year, no Caribbean Canadian made the list, but Ishion Hutchinson from Port Antonio, Jamaica, is among the five poets vying for the prestigious June 5th poetry prize. Ishion Hutchinson The 40-year-old Jamaican poet is nominated for his book “School of Instructions,” which delves into the experiences of West Indian volunteer soldiers in British regiments during World War I. The poetry collection captures the psychological and physical challenges faced by these Black soldiers in the Middle East theatre of war, refracting their struggle against the colonial power they served. The narratives of the soldiers intertwine with the story of...

Stories from Little Jamaica earn Toronto writer a place  on Kobo’s Emerging Writer Prize Short List Another week, another Caribbean Canadian author has been nominated for a top national literary prize. Zalika Reid-Benta,  a Toronto-based Jamaican Canadian novelist has made the longlist for the Sixth Annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. She is in the running for the $10,000 prize for literary fiction for her book  Frying Plantain  was published last year and nominated for the 2019 Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious award.    Since then it has won the 2019 Byblacks People’s Choice Awards for Best Author and has been nominated for the Ontario Library Association’s 2020 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and The Canadian Writers’ Union Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Rakuten Kobo, the Toronto based global eBook and audiobook online seller will be announcing the winners of the Emerging Writer Prize in June. It recognizes exceptional...