1. The Frank Collymore Literary Award, launched in 1998, is the most lucrative writing prize in Barbados, with the top “Colly” winner receiving BDS$10,000.00 (US$5,000.00).

2. The National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) Literary Competition produced its first Winning Words anthology of medal-winning entries in 1999.

NO, YOU HAVEN'T missed a thing.  We've shifted the presentation of the ArtsEtc Independence Reading List to the top of the upcoming year instead of leaving it at the end of the previous one.  So you're in the right place: this is the offering for 2021 moving into 2022.  Or, more simply put, for the next twelve months.

To recap, the IndyList, as we like to call it, is a selection of 12 Barbadian books to make friends with over the coming year.   This is its eleventh edition.

2020 Frank Collymore Literary Award winner Linda M. Deane.  Photo Copyright © 2021.

THE 23rd FRANK COLLYMORE LITERARY AWARDS were presented entirely virtually for the first time on February 14, 2021. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, the ceremony was aired via a live stream that used prerecorded readings by the winners in various locations across the island.  

All of the winners were poets this year, with the Prime Minister’s Award going to a prose writer for a YA novel.  

Nailah Folami Imoja's novel Pick of the Crop (Heinemann, 106pp., paperback, 0-435-98966-9) opens with a familiar, Bajan, boys-on-the-block scene, complete with spliff and tamarind tree.  For a book geared toward young adult readers, this is somewhat surprising.  There is the obligatory condemnation, which comes from our hero, Leroi Baines, even as the young offenders puff on.  "I don't know why y'all always burning out wunna brains with that junk..." and "Wunna need to try and keep you mind and body clean.  How you expect to get ahead?"  But the first few pages resonate with other