Monique Roffey, Kevin Jared Hosein & Safiya Sinclair

Continuing our collaboration with Bocas Lit Fest, we welcome three celebrated writers from Trinidad and Jamaica.

In Monique Roffey’s new novel Passiontide, four women spark a revolution on a fictional Caribbean island after a young woman is found dead. An activist, a journalist, and a sex worker join forces to speak out in a community where women’s voices are often silenced. Roffey, a Trinidad-born British writer, has authored eight books, including The Mermaid of Black Conch, a Costa Book of the Year 2020, and Archipelago, winner of the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.

Kevin Jared Hosein’s Hungry Ghosts, set in the 1940s, tells of a missing elite citizen in Trinidad and his wife’s struggle in his absence. She enlists a farm worker for protection, leading to a story of compassion and cruelty. Hosein lives in Trinidad, and Hungry Ghosts, his first adult novel, won the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the fiction category of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize.

Safiya Sinclair’s memoir How to Say Babylon chronicles her upbringing between her mother’s love of books and her father’s strict beliefs against the West’s corrupting influence. Sinclair, born in Jamaica, saw her memoir shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and win the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature.