The top three finalists in the Caribbean Magazine Plus Short Story Contest 2022 will be awarded at a ceremony tomorrow, April 23 that will be streamed on social media.

A release from Caribbean Magazine says that the winners hail from Aruba, Barbados via St Vincent and the Grenadines and Freeport, The Bahamas.

First place finisher, Brandon Boulous from Aruba, with his entry “Barracuda”, said this 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.”

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… terrible”

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

And third place finalist, Sue -Lynne McCrea-Shepherd from Freeport, The Bahamas with her entry, “Watching the Waves,” was 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.”

Co-ordinator in Literatures in English at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, Dr Nicola Hunte was the lead evaluator of the contest and will be the host of the award ceremony. She 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, 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.”

The awards ceremony will be livestreamed on Arawak Media’s Facebook page from at 11:00 a.m.