Nine books, seven by women and five by newly-published writers, make the 12th OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature longlist. The nine authors have roots in five different Caribbean countries.

The 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, sponsored by One Caribbean Media, recognises books in three genre categories – poetry, fiction, and literary non-fiction – published by authors of Caribbean birth or citizenship in the preceding year.

The fiction category testifies to the contemporary dominance of Caribbean women writers, with two debut books joining a novel by a long-acclaimed writer and scholar, said a media release.

It said What Storm, What Thunder, the fourth novel by US-based Haitian-Canadian writer Myriam J A Chancy, was described by the judges as “a work of great force and beauty … profound in its literary and historical breadth and reach. Set in the before and after of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Chancy’s narrators give texture to the everyday, to the delicate work of holding and piecing a life back together.

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House, the first novel by Barbadian Cherie Jones, is “a panoramic story of love, grief, trauma, and resilience. Jones writes with a powerful sense of place, unfalteringly truthful in this portrait of violence and survival. Compelling in its drama and dazzling in its cast, Jones’s novel is a singular and unforgettable achievement,” the release said.

The third longlisted debut work of fiction is Pleasantview, a “novel in stories,” by Trinidadian Celeste Mohammed.

“With its interlocked stories, Mohammed has found a daring new way to paint the portrait of a community,” the judges said. “Pleasantview is a gripping read, written with a deep sense of connection to people and place, both affectionate and loving, while clear-eyed and critical.”

The poetry longlist brings together three books of diverse style, all concerned with how the past shapes the present. Thinking with Trees, the debut book by Jamaica-born, UK-based Jason Allen-Paisant, “invites us to think about a perpetual condition of ‘marronage’ for the Caribbean writer,” the judges said. The collection," they added, “explores nature as a sacred palace for recollection in another tranquillity, far from the one proposed by Wordsworth, a recollection that makes memory present, that heals from the past of marginalisation.”

What Noise Against the Cane, the first full-length book by TT-born, US-based Desiree C Bailey, “re-imagines archival history into a living, breathing, memento of tragic witnessing.”

In these poems, “violence acts on the practice of writing…The book itself is inhabited by various levels of language that intertwine to make present the multiple races and histories that inform each piece,” the release said.

Completing the poetry category is Zion Roses, the second book of poems by Jamaican Monica Minott. “This is a poet that understands voice and voicing,” the judges wrote. “Some of the more startling poems are dramatic monologues.” Here, “the personal and the political, me