The NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago’s annual literary festival, returns this weekend, with a programme of events running from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 April. After three years of hosting a virtual, online festival, the programme is back to an in-person format, based in Port of Spain — but audiences elsewhere won’t be left out.
The festival livestream — available at the NGC Bocas Lit Fest website as well as YouTube and Facebook — will make events on the main stage accessible for viewers anywhere, with no tickets or registration required. The livestream programme is available at www.bocaslitfest.com/festival/live, with sessions kicking off on Friday 28 April from 10 am TT time (AST).
“We know many literature lovers across the Caribbean and around the world got accustomed to joining the festival online during the three-year COVID period,” says NGC Bocas Lit Fest festival director Nicholas Laughlin. “That was the best thing about shifting to a virtual format — being able to take the programme to viewers everywhere. Now that we’re back to an in-person format, we can’t leave that international audience behind.”
As always, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest will offer a programme that’s global in scope, but with a definite Caribbean focus. Among the authors in the 2023 lineup are Bernardine Evaristo, 2019 Booker Prize winner; the iconic Jamaican dub poet and musician Linton Kwesi Johnson, speaking about his new book of essays, Time Come; and Trinidad-born poet Anthony Joseph, winner of the 2022 T.S. Eliot Prize.
Viewers will also get to hear from Caribbean-based authors of internationally published novels, part of a generation of writers winning major books deals while based at home — such as T&T’s Kevin Jared Hosein (Hungry Ghosts) and Breanne Mc Ivor (The God of Good Looks), Jamaica’s Sharma Taylor (What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You), and Cherie Jones of Barbados (How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House).
Poets are in the mix as well — the festival livestream audience can look forward to readings featuring UK-based Jamaican poet Jason Allen-Paisant (Self-Portrait as Othello), Barbadian British Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa (Cane, Corn & Gully), US-based Trinidadian Desiree C. Bailey (What Noise Against the Cane), and Kittitian-British Adam Lowe (Patterflash).
And the announcement ceremony for the 2023 OCM Bocas Prize — the most coveted award for Caribbean writers — will also be streamed. Tune in to hear which of the three genre category winners — Anthony Joseph for poetry, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo for fiction, or Ira Mathur for non-fiction — will take the overall prize and the cash award of US$10,000.
The full programme for the 2023 NGC Bocas Lit Fest is online at www.bocaslitfest.com.