Local author Kevin Jared Hosein has won the Caribbean regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the second time.
The prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from the Commonwealth and it is the only prize in the world where entries can be submitted in Bengali, Chinese, English, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, and Tamil.
Hosein’s winning entry, Passage, sends a midlife crisis-ridden protagonist into the wilderness in search for a mystery woman—with unforeseen consequences for others, and for himself. He won the prize in 2015.
The international judging panel, chaired by the novelist and poet Sarah Hall, has chosen the five regional winners—tackling issues from abortion to transgender identity, from religion to mental illness—from a shortlist of 24, with 5,182 stories submitted from 48 Commonwealth countries.
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is run by Commonwealth Writers, which develops and connects writers across the world and tackles the challenges they face in different regions.
Hall said: “Each of the winning regional stories speaks strongly for itself in extraordinary prose, and speaks for and beyond its region, often challenging notions of identity, place and society. Individually, the stories exhibit marvellous imaginative and stylistic diversity; together, they remind us that our deeper human concerns and conundrums are shared, and that the short story form is uniquely adept at offering the reader a world in which she or he might feel a sense both of belonging and un-belonging, might question his or her understanding of the world.”
Commenting on his victory, Hosein said: “Trinidad and Tobago writes itself. It writes loudly and quietly at the same time. Loudly, because it likes to boast of its best and worst parts. Quietly, because it thinks nobody cares to listen. This win, along with the many voices year after year whom have shortlisted and won for this little twin-island nation, is reinforced proof that people out there are entertained by our stories, derive meaning and relevance from them, and are moved by them. It is proof that people care to listen.