Monday, May 2, 2016
Author Olive Senior was named the overall winner of the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for her short story collection The Pain Tree.
Senior has lived in Toronto since 1993, but was born and raised in Jamaica. The Pain Tree is her fifth work of fiction and is set in Jamaica over a period of almost 100 years.
The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is awarded to books written by Caribbean authors. There are three winners declared, one each in the categories of fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The overall winner selected from that group. The overall winner receives an award of $10,000 U.S. ($12,548 CDN), while the other two finalists receive $3,000 U.S. ($3,764.40 CDN).
Senior won the prize’s fiction category in early April, and was declared the overall winner on Saturday against Tiphanie Yanique, who won the poetry category for Wife and Jacqueline Bishop, who won the nonfiction category for The Gymnast and Other Positions.
In 2015, Senior won the nonfiction category for Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal. The overall grand prize that year went to poet Vladimir Lucien forSounding Ground.
Source: cbc.ca/books