A mem­oir by Guyanese-Cana­di­an au­thor Tes­sa McWatt has been named the win­ner of the award for best Caribbean book of the past year.

The Snag: A Moth­er, a For­est, and Wild Grief is the win­ner of the over­all 2026 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture, which comes with a cash award of US$10,000, spon­sored by One Caribbean Me­dia Lim­it­ed.

McWatt is the first Guyanese au­thor ever to be named the over­all win­ner in the 16th year of the Prize. Over her ca­reer, she has pub­lished eleven books, as well as short sto­ries and es­says, and she is al­so a li­bret­tist.

The Snag—de­scribed by the judges as “a work of rare bril­liance”—is pub­lished by Ran­dom House in Cana­da and Scribe in the Unit­ed King­dom, where McWatt is now based, and where she is Pro­fes­sor of Cre­ative Writ­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of East An­glia.

Cel­e­brat­ed ed­i­tor and pub­lish­er Mar­garet Bus­by, chief judge for the prize, made the an­nounce­ment dur­ing the award cer­e­mo­ny on Sat­ur­day, May 2, dur­ing this year’s Bo­cas Lit Fest. The event al­so ho­n­oured po­et­ry win­ner Can­isia Lu­brin (for her book The World Af­ter Rain) and fic­tion win­ner Justin Haynes (for his de­but nov­el Ibis).

The cer­e­mo­ny, held at the Old Fire Sta­tion ad­ja­cent to the Na­tion­al Li­brary of Trinidad and To­ba­go in Port-of-Spain, al­so paid trib­ute to the win­ner of the 2026 Bo­cas Hen­ry Swanzy Award for Dis­tin­guished Ser­vice to Caribbean Let­ters, lit­er­ary schol­ar and crit­ic Frank Bir­bals­ingh—who, like McWatt, is Guyanese-Cana­di­an.

Chief judge Mar­garet Bus­by was joined on the fi­nal judg­ing pan­el for the OCM Bo­cas Prize by Ja­maican-British po­et and mem­oirist Ray­mond Antrobus, Ja­maican-Amer­i­can aca­d­e­m­ic Kel­ly Bak­er Josephs, and British aca­d­e­m­ic Al­i­son Don­nell.

The OCM Bo­cas Prize was first award­ed in 2011. McWatt was pre­vi­ous­ly named a non­fic­tion win­ner in 2021, with her book Shame on Me: An Anato­my of Race and Be­long­ing.

In The Snag, McWatt ex­plores both in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive grief, pri­vate and com­mu­nal loss. She de­scribes con­fronting her el­der­ly moth­er’s wors­en­ing de­men­tia while seek­ing com­fort in the nat­ur­al world, with its lessons about life and death, de­cay and re­new­al. In the judges’ words, “It ar­tic­u­lates, in bold, clear, and sear­ing­ly beau­ti­ful lan­guage, how our per­son­al grief is in­ti­mate­ly con­nect­ed to plan­e­tary loss. El­e­gant­ly craft­ed, and com­pelling at every turn, it speaks at once to the speci­fici­ty of los­ing a par­ent, to the col­lec­tive trau­ma of an­ces­tral grief, and to our com­mu­nal sor­row in the face of mon­u­men­tal plan­e­tary dis­tur­bances.”

The 2026 Bo­cas Lit Fest con­clud­ed its four-day pro­gramme on Sun­day, May 3, with a slate of events at the Na­tion­al Li­brary of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The fes­ti­val’s grand fi­nale is the 2026 Na­tion­al Po­et­ry Slam at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts.

The JB Fer­nan­des Memo­r­i­al Trust, OCM, and the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment are the main spon­sors of the 2026 Bo­cas Lit Fest; the fes­ti­val is al­so spon­sored by the Massy Foun­da­tion, the British Coun­cil, As­so­ci­at­ed Brands, the ANSA McAL Foun­da­tion, and The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. Am­plia is the fes­ti­val’s of­fi­cial livestream part­ner and AVIT Sup­port Ltd is the of­fi­cial tech­nol­o­gy part­ner.