The Guyana Prize for Literature Committee has announced its shortlist of winners for the prestigious awards billed for September 15 at the Pegasus Hotel, Georgetown. In a statement, the committee said the shortlists and winners were decided by a jury made up of distinguished judges, selected by the Guyana Prize Management Committee because of their outstanding credentials in the field of literature as literary critics, academics, literary editors, authors and creative writers.
Shortlist
For the Best Book of Fiction, Ruel Johnson’s Collected Fictions, a semi-autobiographical collection of short fiction that addresses racial and political tensions, relationships and displacement and Chaitram Singh’s The February 23rd Coup , a fast- paced fictional account of an attempted coup by a group of disaffected Guyanese soldiers have been shortlisted.
In the Best Book of Poetry category: Cassia Alphonso’s Black Cake Mix, a collection of evocative poems with a well-realised creole voice; Ian McDonald’s The Comfort of All Things , an elegiac musings by a mature poet on aging and mortality; and Sasenarine Persaud’s Lantana Strangling Ixora Complex , a collection of introspective poems with a bitter edge are on the shortlist.
Harold Bascom’s “Deportee”, a screenplay for a crime thriller set in New York and Georgetown, involving deportation, narco-trafficking and corruption and Mosa Mathifa Telford’s “Sauda”, a morality tale about the need for understanding and forgiveness between mothers and daughters, and the difficulties of escaping from a legacy of self- contempt have been chosen for the best drama prize.
For the Best First Book of Fiction, the committee said only one entry was shortlisted, and will therefore be declared the winner. In the Best First Book of Poetry, no work was considered suitable for a shortlist in this category.
The winners of the prize will be announced by the Chairman of the Jury at the Guyana Prize Awards ceremony to be held on September 15.
The awards will be presented to the winners by President Donald Ramotar. Chair of the Jury, Professor Jane Bryce will read the judges’ report.
Panel
The Jury panel is made up of Professor Jane Bryce, Brendan de Caires, Dr Louis Regis, Professor Daizal Samad and Lori Shelbourn. According to the committee, Bryce is a professor of African literature and film in the Department of Language, Linguistics and Literature, University of the West Indies (UWI), Cave Hill campus. Bryce, who is also a fiction writer, has published prose works and short fiction. She is a co-editor of Poui, the Cave Hill Journal of creative writing; has conducted courses in creative writing; and is a leading scholar on African and Caribbean films.
de Caires has been described as a literary critic, reviewer, and was an editor and book reviewer for the Caribbean Review of Books (CRB). He has published literary articles and reviews and is a co-founder of Moray House in Georgetown.
Regis is head of Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies at UWI, St Augustine campus and a specialist in West Indian literature, cultural studies and cultural history; and an authority on the political calypso in Trinidad.
He has researched and published on carnival and calypso, including studies of Black Stalin and Maestro and has been a theatre director.
Samad is a professor of literature. He is also a fiction writer and former director of the University of Guyana (UG), Tain Berbice campus. Professor Samad has worked in Canada and the Middle East and has published extensively on literature.
Shelbourn of the University of Leeds, UK has researched extensively on Wilson Harris for doctoral studies at Leeds and is an authority on Harris.
Shelbourn is also a researcher of West Indian literature, literary editor, writer of literary entries for Wikipedia and has directed international conference on Caribbean literature and culture in the UK.
