Earl Lovelace cops US$10,000 Bocas prize

(Trinidad Express) Trinidadian novelist Earl Lovelace last night won the OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean Literature. He was awarded US$10,000 for taking home the top prize at the end of the NGC Bocas Lit Festival.

One Caribbean Media group chief executive officer Dawn Thomas said the NGC Bocas Lit Fest calls attention to the literary product and potential of gifted Caribbean brothers and sisters.

“In nearly 100 events, NGC Bocas 2012 exalts the brilliantly successful, while encouraging all those still ardently striving to find their voices and to give expression to a Caribbean vision of life and the world,” she said at the NGC Bocas Lit Fest OCM Bocas Prize Announcement Ceremony at the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port of Spain.

Thomas commended the achievements of Bocas founder and director Marina Salandy-Brown and her team.

She said: “One Caribbean Media has derived both satisfaction and inspiration from our own collaboration with Marina and Bocas. Over the last year, OCM have ourselves become publishers, with the release in December 2011 of The Best of Keith Smith. We are proud to offer this collection of pieces by the late great Express editor and columnist, to take its place alongside the works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, being celebrated at NGC Bocas Lit Fest 2012.”

“The core business of One Caribbean Media, of course, remains that of the media. On that basis, I can also report that, with our acquisition this year of requisite radio assets, OCM is uniquely positioned to offer, in our Caribbean SuperStation, a Caribbean-wide media platform, which represents, we are sure, a ready opportunity for raising consciousness and expanding appreciation of regional artistic and cultural output,” she added.