Caribbean Magazine Plus and Arawak Media is pleased to announce the winners of the 2021/2022 Short Story Contest

The award ceremony on April 23, 2022 at 11am

April 15, 2022: The Caribbean Magazine Plus Short Story Contest award ceremony will be held on Saturday April 23, 2022 at 11am and will be streamed on our Facebook platform. These writers will have the opportunity to come to the fore and tell us and tell the wold about their stories and what drove them to create. 

The top three finalists hail from Aruba, Barbados via St Vincent and the Grenadines and Freeport, The Bahamas. 

Brandon Boulous, first place finisher from Aruba, with his entry “Barracuda”, said about his entry: “I wrote it in the language of my island, which is Papimento. On the island, it’s a really unexplored language in the medium of literature. We mostly write children’s books here. So I really wanted to tackle something visceral. I wanted to explore violence with our language. So I just came up with a barracuda attack in my mind and I wanted to use it to explore that way and describe new things basically with our Creole language.” 

Brandon will tell all when we sit and chat on April 23 and share more with us on his writing process. 

Second place finalist, LaFluer Cockburn from Barbados via St Vincent and the Grenadines with her entry “Yurumein,” said: “I was doing some research on mental health and how society views it. You know, sometimes people are shunned and I was trying to show that sometimes you can be embraced, you can find support within your community and how that can help you deal with your mental health issue. It doesn’t have to be shunned and it doesn’t have to be a terrible” 

The power coming from LaFluer’s entry is evident and awe inspiring as mental health is an often silent killer in the Caribbean and Central American communities. 

Sue -Lynne McCrea-Shepherd, third place finalist from Freeport, The Bahamas with her entry, “Watching the Waves,” was more humbled by the experience. She said: “I can’t believe it. I am just now coming off of an operation and this is great news. I am humbled.” 

The erstwhile Dr Nicola Hunte, coordinator in Literatures in English, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, was the contest lead evaluator and will be the host of the award ceremony, said that she was more than happy to support Arawak Media and Caribbean Magazine Plus on this initiative. 

She added that there were great pieces all around and after she narrowed it down to six finalists, of which she sent to her team for blind assessment, she was able to narrow it down to the last three finalists. 

The runner’s up were: 

Janielle Brown from St Vincent and the Grenadines in fourth place with “Death Row”; 

Michael J Miller from The Bahamas in fifth place with “City of Kings; and 

Elizabeth Best in sixth place from the United States with “A Bloody Tall Tale or Not.” 

You can watch the entire award ceremony on our Facebook page live on Saturday April 23, 2022 at 11am @Caribbean Magazine Plus or you can catch the replay on our YouTube channel @CaribMag TV or our Facebook page. Please subscribe to our website, Caribbean Magazine Plus for more updates on our contests and other news from around the Caribbean and Central American region.