Miller wins US$10,000 OCM Bocas prize

The announcement was made by the chief judge of the prize, Professor Edward Baugh, at a ceremony last night at the Old Fire Station, Port-of-Spain. The OCM Bocas Prize is one of the highlights of the annual NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

This was Miller’s second time at the OCM Bocas Prize ceremony, as he was previously named the non-fiction category winner and shortlisted for the overall prize in 2014, with his essay collection, Writing Down the Vision.

Miller’s novel was chosen by the judges from a short-list of three books, made up of the genre category winners of the 2017 prize.

The poetry winner was Jamaican Safiya Sinclair, for her debut book Cannibal, and the non-fiction winner was the late Trinidadian writer Angelo Bissessarsingh, for his twin volumes Virtual Glimpses into the Past/A Walk Back in Time: Snapshots of the History of Trinidad and Tobago. They each received an award of US$3,000; Bissessarsingh’s award was accepted by his mother Carmen.

Augustown is a historical epic set in a deprived community on the outskirts of Kingston, Jamaica’s capital. The novel jumps between the 1980s and the early 20th century and tackles complexities of class, ethnicity, religion, and language.

The judges described Augustown as “a spell-binding novel written in simple, well limned, imagistic prose. It’s a novel that’s realistic - a realism grounded in history - and magic-realist.” In addition to Professor Baugh, the final judging panel for the prize included UK-based Guyanese writer David Dabydeen, academic Susheila Nasta, and Jamaican editor Kim Robinson- Walcott.

Miller, 38, who is based in the United Kingdom and is professor of creative writing at the University of Exeter, is the youngest winner of the OCM Bocas Prize to date.

The 2017 NGC Bocas Lit Fest opened on April 26 and ends tonight with Grand Slam: 2017 First Citizens National Poetry Slam Finals.