The NGC Bocas Lit Fest is the Trinidad and Tobago literary festival that takes place annually during the last weekend of April in Port of Spain. Inaugurated in 2011,"The Bocas Lit Fest: The Trinidad and Tobago Literary Festival" , Repeating Islands, February 2011. it is the first major literary festival in the southern Caribbean"3 shortlisted for Bocas Prize", UWI Today, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, April 2011. and largest literary festival in the Anglophone Caribbean."NGC Bocas Lit Fest Debate on TV6 today", Trinidad Express Newspapers, 22 April 2012.Carolyn Cooper, "T&T Lit Fest Puts Us to Shame", Jamaica Gleaner, 8 May 2011."NGC Bocas Lit Fest Debate on TV6 today", Tun Up TV. A registered non-profit company, the festival has as its title sponsor the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago (NGC).Iana Seales, "Lit Fest opens up to non-English writers", Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, 19 March 2015. Other sponsors and partners include First Citizens Bank, One Caribbean Media (OCM), who sponsor the associated OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, CODE (sponsors of the Burt Award), and the Commonwealth Foundation."NGC Bocas Lit Fest launched at NALIS", Loop, 19 March 2015."Our Sponsors", NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
The NGC Bocas Lit Fest also works in collaboration with other international festivals and initiatives, such as the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival and has hosted events showcasing Caribbean writing talent in New York,Mark Fraser, "Bocas goes to Harlem! TT’s literary festival joins fiction programme in New York City", Trinidad Express Newspapers, 4 July 2014. at the Brooklyn Book Fair,"Bocas at the Brooklyn Book Fest", 2013. NGC Bocas Lit Fest website.Johnny Temple "Bookish in Brooklyn" (on the Caribbean element in the Brooklyn Book Festival). Word of Mouth, Caribbean Beat, Issue 117, September/October 2012. the Harlem Book Fair"Coming from Far: Caribbean Writers on Home and Otherness (Readings and Discussion)". Presented by the NGC Bocas Literary Festival. Harlem Book Fair 2014.Ivette Romero, "Bocas Goes to Harlem", Repeating Islands, 5 July 2014. and elsewhere in the US. In 2012, Bocas partnered with the Edinburgh World Writers Conference as part of a line-up of 14 countries delivering a multinational series of talks marking the 50th anniversary of the five-day meeting of "an impressive, sensational and sometimes scandalous group of writers" at the first Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama."World Writers at Bocas", Trinidad Express newspapers, 10 March 2013. The Bocas Lit Fest was described by Claire Armitstead of The Guardian as "expansive in its cultural reach, reflecting a region that has responded to its own colonisation over the centuries by seeding its people to every continent".Claire Armitstead, "Marlon James makes hero's return to the Caribbean at Bocas festival", The Guardian, 5 May 2016.
Background The Bocas Lit Fest was established in 2011, with the organising team comprising Marina Salandy-Brown, founder and managing director; programme director Nicholas Laughlin,Nicholas Laughlin's website. editor of the Caribbean Review of Books and of Caribbean Beat; Funso Aiyejina, prize-winning author and dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine; Marjorie Thorpe, former professor of literature at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, independent bookseller Joan Dayal of Paper Based Bookshop;Paper Based Bookshop website.Aneka Lee, "Paper Based at The Normandie a bibliophile’s hidden dream", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 30 April 2014. Danielle Delon, editor of The Letters of Margaret Mann; local businesswoman Lucita Esau; and Patrice Matthews, a marketing and media professional.About the NGC Bocas Lit Fest. In 2019, Rani Lakhan-Narace was appointed as president of the Bocas Lit Fest.Julien Neaves, "Bocas president: Festival keeps on growing", Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, 1 April 2020.
The festival's name derives from the Spanish word for mouth, boca – the organ of speech and song and storytelling – while also referencing the Bocas del Dragón (the Dragon's Mouths), which are the narrow straits off Trinidad’s north-west peninsula that connect the Gulf of Paria to the Caribbean Sea. For centuries, the Bocas were the gateways connecting Trinidad to the Caribbean and the Atlantic Ocean.
The festival's strapline is: "Celebrating books, writers, and writing from the Caribbean and the rest of the world".
The main venues are the National Library (NALIS)Annie Paul, "The Bocas Lit Fest 2011", Active Voice, 7 May 2011. and the Old Fire Station, in downtown Port of Spain,Marina Salandy-Brown, "What’s in a festival", Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, 26 April 2012. with satellite evening events at venues around the city.
There is also a full programme of activities for young readers, sponsored by KFC, and in the run-up to the festival storytelling events take place in Tobago, Couva, Chaguanas, San Fernando, Point Fortin, Mayaro and Arima.
A new venture is a year-round programme of events at The Writers Centre (TWC) at Alcazar Street, Port of Spain, and the 10th anniversary celebrations of Bocas in 2020 included plans for Caribbean writers with new books to participate in UK literary festivals as well as events at the British Library, Oxford University and the University of East Anglia.
History The Bocas Lit Fest was held for the first time in 2011 – from Thursday, 28 April to Sunday, 1 May"2011 Bocas Lit Fest programme announced". – including readings, panel discussions, workshops, film screenings and art exhibitions."Trinidad and Tobago's Bocas Literary Festival: Ready, set!", signifyinguyana.com, 24 March 2011. Attracting 3,500 attendances over the four days.A. J. Theolade, "Bocas Lit Fest continues to blossom", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 23 April 2014. the festival reflected its founder's aims "to promote literature and publishing in Trinidad and Tobago and the need for Caribbean writing to be celebrated everywhere"."Bocas Lit Fest a hit in London", Trinidad Express Newspapers, 24 June 2011.
The scores of writers taking part in the 2012 festival, both locally based and from abroad,Julien Neaves, "Literary meals at Bocas Lit Fest", Trinidad Express Newspapers, 26 April 2012. included Fred D'Aguiar, Earl Lovelace, Vahni Capildeo, Chika Unigwe, Monique Roffey, Kenneth Ramchand, Mervyn Morris, Achy Obejas, Rabindranath Maharaj, George Lamming, professor of genetics Steve Jones, Merle Hodge, Rahul Bhattacharya, and Michael Anthony. The festival featured readings, discussions, performances, workshops, screenings of films based on Caribbean writing and music.Cherisse Moe, "Bocas Lit Fest to showcase creative talent", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 26 April 2012.
In 2013, the South+Central NGC Bocas Lit Fest, scheduled to take place annually in November, was inaugurated.Shivanee Ramlochan, "The NGC Bocas Lit Fest’s South+Central Weekend"."NGC Bocas Lit Fest goes south, central", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 25 October 2013. In November 2014, NGC Bocas Lit Fest South was hosted by Southern Academy for the Performing Arts (SAPA) in San Fernando, birthplace of the writer Sam Selvon, and the festival commemorated the 20th anniversary of his death.Shivanee Ramlochan, "Bocas South grows", Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, 16 November 2014.
In 2014, "Festival Radio" was inaugurated, to "bring the festival experience to listeners around the globe","NGC Bocas Lit Fest makes radio debut", Trinidad Express Newspapers, 22 April 2014. as well as attracting "a lot of attention on social media, spurred on in part by the active new media presence of the festival itself".Matthew Hunte, "Bocas Literary Festival Showcases Caribbean Literature", Global Voices, 2 May 2014.
As of 2022, Nicholas Laughlin has been the festival and programme director of the Bocas Lit Fest, with Marina Salandy-Brown remaining as the festival's president."Nicholas Laughlin", International Literature Showcase.
Title sponsor NGC only partially funded the literary festival in 2024, and made no contribution to the 2025 festival.
Recognition In February 2017, the Bocas Lit Fest was named as one of "the world's very best literary events" in a list of "20 Best Literary Festivals Around the World That You Should Attend" chosen by Penguin Random House - The Writers' Academy, alongside other prestigious festivals including Hay, Edinburgh and Jaipur."20 Best Literary Festivals Around the World That You Should Attend", The Writers' Academy, Penguin Random House, 10 February 2017."Bocas Lit Fest named among the world’s top literary festivals", 103fm, 14 February 2017."Bocas Lit Fest Named Among Top 20 Literary Festivals Worldwide", C News, 17 February 2017.
Another accolade, from Jonathan Ford of the Financial Times in May 2017, noted: "In the seven years since Bocas launched, Caribbean writers have been heaped with international accolades — the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, four Forward Prizes for Poetry between 2014 and 2016, and a slew of National Book Awards. Virtually all the writers honoured — including Marlon James, Kei Miller and Vahni Capildeo — were first recognised at this extraordinary little festival in the tropics, a place that is only far away to those who refuse to read."Jonathan Ford, "Trinidad Diary", Financial Times, 26 May 2017.
The Bocas Lit Fest, together with its founder Marina Salandy-Brown, was honoured by the International Women's Forum (IWF) in the "Ideas Remaking the World" segment of IWF's World Leadership Conference in November 2021, being described as "the embodiment of Caribbean vibrancy, energy and creativity".
Associated initiatives
The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
The centrepiece of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest festival is the announcement at an award ceremony of the overall winner of the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature."Bocas Lit Fest – The Trinidad and Tobago Literary Festival", Creative Caribbean Network. Entries for the prize are in the categories of fiction, non-fiction and poetry for a book by a Caribbean writer published in the previous year, with the overall winner being chosen by a panel of judges from the three genre winners. The winners have been: in 2011, Derek Walcott's poetry collection White Egrets, in 2012 Earl Lovelace's novel Is Just a Movie, in 2013 Monique Roffey's novel Archipelago, in 2014 Robert Antoni's novel As Flies to Whatless Boys, in 2015 Vladimir Lucien's Sounding Ground (poetry), in 2016 Olive Senior's The Pain Tree (fiction), in 2017 Kei Miller's Augustown (fiction), in 2018 Jennifer Rahim's Curfew Chronicles (fiction), and in 2019 Kevin Adonis Browne's High Mas (non-fiction)."OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature" on NGC Bocas Lit Fest website."The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature", NGC Bocas Lit Fest, 2019.
The Emerging Caribbean Writers Prize (formerly the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize)