Eleven works have been short-listed for the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award, ahead of the 2010 awards ceremony scheduled for September 1.

The Guyana Prize for Literature’s Management Committee says those short-listed for the Caribbean award comes from both fiction and poetry categories. President Bharrat Jagdeo is expected to attend and present the prizes. 

The committee says winners of the awards have been judged from fifty-three entries in the Guyana Prize and forty-one entries in the Caribbean Award.  The Caribbean Award attracted entries from Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados, Haiti, St Lucia, Barbados, Jamaica and St Maarten.

The creation of the Caribbean Award helps the Guyana Prize to further fulfil one of its objectives which is “to provide encouragement for the development of good creative writing among Guyanese in particular and Caribbean writers in general,”  according to a statement issued by the Management Committee.

The jury for the Guyana Prize for Literature Caribbean Award have decided on the shortlist of finalists in the various categories of the award. 

The short listed works are listed below in alphabetical order:

Fiction

Amanda Smyth, Black Rock

Diana McCaulay, Dog-heart

Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo

Myriam J. A. Chancy, The Loneliness of Angels

Patricia Powell, The Fullness of Everything

Poetry

Christian Campbell, Running the Dusk         

Ishion Hutchinson, Far District                                     

Jennifer Rahim, Approaching Sabbaths                

John Agard,  Clever Backbone                             

Mark McWatt, The Journey to Le Repentir  

Vahni Capildeo, Undraining Sea         

THE JUDGES

Stewart Brown (Chairman of the Panel) is Reader in Caribbean and West African Literature in the Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.  He is a poet, artist, critic, editor and anthologist who has researched and published extensively in areas of West Indian literature.  Among his publications are books of poetry including Lugard’s Bridge;  important Caribbean anthologies including Voiceprint; a collection of his essays including Tourist, Traveler, Troublemaker;  and other critical works including The Art of Derek Walcott, The art of Kamau Brathwaite and The Art of Martin Carter.  He has been a judge in the Guyana Prize for Literature, a Visiting lecturer at UWI, Cave Hill and has exhibited his work in the fine arts. 

Funso Aiyejina is a Professor of Literature and Creative Writing.  He is a Nigerian fiction writer who won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the Africa Region for his collection of short stories, and has conducted workshops in Creative Writing, including the Cropper Foundation Workshop in Trinidad.  He is also one of the directors of the OCM Bocas Caribbean Book Festival and Awards.  He is the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the UWI, St Augustine, and has researched and published extensively in his field.    

Rawle Gibbons is a lecturer in the Centre for Creative and Festival Arts at the UWI, St Augustine, Trinidad.  He has researched extensively in theatre, drama, and the arts of carnival and lectures in those areas.  Additionally, he is the President of CaribNet, a regional network of Caribbean artists and dramatists.  He is one of the leading dramatists in Trinidad and the Caribbean and has written and directed several plays including Ogun Iaan (as in Pan), I La Wa, and The Calypso Trilogy, which has also been published in book form.  He is the Chief Examiner for the CXC Theatre Arts. 

The Caribbean Award is a new development in the Guyana Prize and it will be presented for the first time this year in the same categories of Best First Book of Fiction, Best First Book of Poetry, Best Book of Fiction, Best Book of Poetry, and Best Drama as the Guyana Prize for Literature.

Like the Guyana Prize, the Caribbean Award  will  be held every two years, and will be adjudicated by a panel of experts  in the field of Literature and Criticism. The Caribbean Award  is adjudicated  by a separate jury from  that for the Guyana Prize for Literature. 

At the ceremony, the Judges will present their reports and the prize-winning authors will read selections from their work. There will also be a special display of the prize-winning entries for previous prizes, along with the short-listed books for 2010.

The Guyana Prize for Literature, which dates back to 1987, is the brainchild of former President, Desmond Hoyte.