One of the most prestigious honors in Caribbean literary circles has found its 2025 recipient: Guyanese-born author and University of East Anglia creative writing professor Tessa McWatt, who has won the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature for her deeply personal memoir *The Snag: A Mother, A Forest and Wild Grief*. The award was presented during a formal ceremony held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, the Caribbean nation that held special meaning for McWatt’s late mother.
Widely recognized as the leading international award for writing rooted in Caribbean experience, the OCM Bocas Prize carries exceptional prestige for authors working in the region and across the global Caribbean diaspora. For McWatt, the honor is far more than a personal career milestone — it is a tribute to the woman at the heart of her memoir.
In an interview with BBC Look East, McWatt shared that winning the prize felt like “a real joy, as it feels like a win for my mother, who is the central figure in the book and my heart’s inspiration.” The memoir traces the two-month-long journey of losing McWatt’s mother to dementia, from the difficult transition of moving her out of her long-time home to the quiet, profound lessons McWatt learned while caring for her.
What sets the work apart is how it weaves personal grief into a broader meditation on collective loss. While navigating her mother’s decline, McWatt also grieved the death of a close friend, supported another friend facing a stage four cancer diagnosis, and confronted the growing “climate grief” tied to widespread environmental destruction, exacerbated by cascading global crises including the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing armed conflict. Rather than turning away from this overlapping pain, McWatt set out to explore how to embrace grief as a natural, meaningful part of life.
The book’s evocative title draws from a forestry term: a “snag” refers to a dead or dying tree left standing in a woodland. While many might see such a tree as useless and ready for removal, ecologists recognize snags as critical to forest ecosystems — they provide habitat for wildlife, cycle nutrients back into the soil, and sustain the forest’s long-term health. For McWatt, this concept became a powerful metaphor for her mother’s journey with dementia, and for the inherent value of aging and lives nearing their end.
“It became a metaphor for my mum and richness of the elderly and the richness of watching someone go through dementia. I was learning some amazing things from her,” McWatt explained.
Receiving the award in Port of Spain held extra emotional weight for the author, who noted her mother traveled to Trinidad every year. “It felt like going home and to give that honour to her there, it was really lovely. It was an award for her,” she said.
For emerging writers hoping to share their own vulnerable stories, McWatt offered simple, direct advice: “write your truth, don’t stop.”