THE PAGES OF THE SEA shortlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize in Fiction!
We’re thrilled to share that this week, The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk was announced as making the fiction category shortlist for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature! The announcement was made on Sunday, March 16, and can be read in full here.
The judges stated,
“[The Pages of the Sea] brings new energy and form to a familiar Caribbean childhood, that of the pain and desolation of the child left behind when a parent migrates . . . The prose has an immediacy that matches the girl’s intensity, as well as her confusion about what secrets the adults around her appear to be hiding.”
The winners in the three genre categories will be announced on 6 April, and the overall winner will be announced on 3 May at the 2025 Bocas Lit Fest.
The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is an annual award for literary books by Caribbean writers, first presented in 2011. Books are judged in three categories: poetry; fiction—both novels and collections of short stories; and literary nonfiction. A panel of three judges for each genre category determine category shortlists and winners, before the three category winners are then judged by a panel of four judges—consisting of the chairs of the category panels and the prize chair—who determine the overall winner. The author of the book judged the overall winner will receive an award of US$10,000. The other category winners will receive US$3,000.
Get your copy of The Pages of the Sea here!
Shortlisted for the 2025 OCM Bocas Prize in Fiction • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024 • A Guardian Best Fiction Book of 2024 • A CBC Best Fiction Book of the Year
On a Caribbean island in the mid-1960s, a young girl copes with the heavy cost of migration.
When her mother emigrates to England to find work, Wheeler and her older sisters are left to live with their aunts and cousins. She spends most days with her cousin Donelle, knocking about their island community. They know they must address their elders properly and change their shoes after church. And during the long, quiet weeks of Lent, when the absent sound of the radio seems to follow them down the road, they look forward to kite season. But Donelle is just a child, too, and though her sisters look after her with varying levels of patience, Wheeler couldn’t feel more alone. Everyone tells her that soon her mother will send for her, but how much longer will it be? And as she does her best to navigate the tensions between her aunts, why does it feel like there’s no one looking out for her at all?
Credit: Panagiotis Ziakas
A story of sisterhood, secrets, and the sacrifices of love, The Pages of the Sea is a tenderly lyrical portrait of innocence and an intensely moving evocation of what it’s like to be a child left behind.
Anne Hawk grew up in the Caribbean, the UK and Canada. She has worked as a journalist, a paralegal and was for many years a secondary school teacher. She is married and lives in London. The Pages of the Sea is her first novel.
