We are excited to announce that Tessa McWatt’s book, The Snag: A Mother, a Forest, and Wild Grief, is the overall winner of the 2026 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, as well as the 2026 Non-Fiction prize for the same award.
This is the second time the author has won the Non-Fiction prize, as her book Shame On Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging, was announced the winner for the same category in 2020. The Snag, is a beautifully written account of collective and personal grief, whilst also incorporating musings on nature and climate change.
The OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature is a prestigious 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 — including books of essays, biography and autobiography, history, current affairs, travel, and other genres, which demonstrate literary qualities and use literary techniques, regardless of subject matter.
The winners were announced at an event on the 2 May 2026, at the 2026 Bocas Lit Fest in Port of Spain, where Tessa gave an emotional speech saying, “This honour is really for my mother, the central figure of this book — the proud Guyanese woman who bore me,” she said. “She is my heart’s guide.”
Tessa McWatt is the author of seven novels, two books for young people, and two nonfiction titles. Her work has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award and the Toronto Book Awards, and won the Eccles British Library Award 2018. McWatt is Professor of Creative Writing at UEA and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Congratulations to Tessa!