On a memorable Saturday evening in Port of Spain at the annual Bocas Lit Fest prize-giving ceremony, literary history was made as Guyanese-Canadian writer Tessa McWatt claimed the overall 2026 OCM Bocas Prize, becoming the first author from Guyana to take home the region’s most prestigious literary honor. In an intimate, emotionally charged acceptance speech delivered at the Old Fire Station venue on Abercromby Street, McWatt centered her landmark win on the woman at the heart of her award-winning memoir: her mother.
Born in Guyana and now based in Canada while holding a creative writing professorship at the UK’s University of East Anglia, McWatt opened her remarks by expressing heartfelt gratitude for the chance to finally attend the festival in person. The 2020 iteration of the event saw McWatt unable to travel from London due to global COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, making this in-person acceptance a full-circle moment for the long-connected Caribbean writer. “For someone who left the Caribbean at a young age, this event and others like it keep me connected to my essence,” she told the packed audience.
McWatt’s winning work, *The Snag: A Mother, a Forest, and Wild Grief*, is a deeply personal memoir that weaves together themes of familial loss, inherited memory, and natural renewal, with her mother serving as the book’s emotional anchor. “This honour is really for my mother, the central figure of this book — the proud Guyanese woman who bore me,” McWatt said. “She is my heart’s guide.”
The author shared that even as her mother lives with declining cognitive health in a care home, a copy of the memoir now rests beside her bed, and McWatt visits regularly. Before traveling to Trinidad and Tobago for the ceremony, McWatt told her mother of the nomination, and received a characteristically vibrant response: “She said, ‘Oh, I’m coming—bring me.’” McWatt drew warm laughter and applause from the crowd as she recalled her mother’s lifelong love of Caribbean culture, noting that even into her seventies, she traveled annually to Trinidad’s Carnival, “jumping up in a band wearing very little.”
Though her mother can no longer read due to her dementia, McWatt said her mother still recognizes herself in the memoir’s photographs, including one of her playing piano. *The Snag* confronts the grief and complexity of caring for a parent with dementia, while drawing parallels between the natural cycles of the forest—decay and regrowth—to process the experience. A well-established author with 11 published books spanning fiction, non-fiction, short stories, essays, and musical libretti, McWatt struck a humble tone, emphasizing that she never expected to claim the top prize. “I told her the book was nominated for a very important prize, but I wasn’t going to win because the writers I was up against were among the very best in the world,” she explained. “I told her I had already won, just being on the list among these incredible writers.” She closed her remarks by thanking her network of supporters, from family and friends to her literary agent and publishing teams across Canada and the UK. This is not McWatt’s first recognition from the OCM Bocas Prize: she took home the non-fiction category award in 2021 for *Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging*.
Saturday’s ceremony also celebrated other standout contributors to Caribbean literature. Canisia Lubrin won the prize’s poetry category for *The World After Rain*, while Justin Haynes took home the fiction award for his debut novel *Ibis*. The 2026 Bocas Henry Swanzy Award for Distinguished Service to Caribbean Letters went to Guyanese-Canadian literary scholar and critic Frank Birbalsingh, marking a second Guyanese-Canadian honoree of the night.
The 16th edition of the Bocas Lit Fest, one of the world’s premier celebrations of Caribbean literary work, concluded the following evening with a rousing grand finale: the National Poetry Slam held at the National Academy for the Performing Arts.