Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

(From left) Blair Bobyk, political and economic counsellor, Canadian High Commission; Dr Michael Bucknor, regional chair, Commonwealth Writer's Prize; Olive Senior, 1987 Commonwealth Writers' Prize winner; and Professor Gordon Shirley, principal, UWI, pose for photographs following the announcement of the winners of the 2008 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and the Caribbean Region) held at the Undercroft, University of the West Indies, on March 13. - photos by Nathaniel Stewart/Freelance Photographer

Before the greetings, before the readings, before the music, before the announcements on Thursday evening at the UWI's Undercroft, Dr Michael Bucknor noted that 90 per cent of the submissions for this year's Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and the Caribbean Region) came from Canada.

And on the shortlists of six books each for the Best First Book and Best Book awards, there was only one non-Canadian, Jamaican Erna Brodber's The Rainmaker's Mistake up for the latter award.

It was not surprising, then, that after the greetings, after the readings and after the music, two books from Canada had been named after the standard "and the winner is...." The End of the Alphabet by C.S. Richardson won Best First Book and Lawrence Hill's The Book of Negroes Best Book.

When Bucknor greeted all on Thursday evening and ran through the required listing of the titled, it was clear that it was a night for writers as Olive Senior, who recently launched her poetry collection Shell, was the only person who was applauded. And after the campus' principal, Professor Gordon Shirley, and deputy dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, Professor Waibinte Wariboko, had expressed their delight with the proceedings, the proof of Bucknor's promise was in readings from the 12 books.

As he had said, "I can guarantee that they are good stories, each compelling in its own way."

The readers were also compelling, Bucknor, Jean Small, Mervyn Morris, Tanya Shirley, Carolyn Allen, Brian Heap and Edward Baugh doing excerpts from different texts, sometimes in pairs of peers.

Morris and Allen did The End of the Alphabet, the story of a man who has found out that he is going to die and decides that he will visit a number of places, from 'A' through to 'z', before he goes. Heap and Allen read a painful excerpt from The Book of Negroes, which detailed how a slave woman was publicly stripped of her clothes, her hair cut and scalp shaved.

Reflection

"I think it is important to reflect of Bob Marley's Redemption Song at this time," Bucknor said, after that reading. And Yekengele, who had earlier done Chopin's Minute Waltz, did an extended interpretation of the song on keyboard.

Olive Senior, a Commonwealth Writers' Prize winner, announced the Best First Book and Blair Bobyk, political and economic counsellor, Canadian High Commission, named the Best Book winner.

Along with other regional winners from Africa, Europe and South Asia, and South East Asia and the South Pacific, winners from Canada and Caribbean will be assessed for the overall Commonwealth Writers' Prize in both categories. The announcement will be made in May in South Africa. The Overall Best Book winner will receive £10,000, while the Overall Best First Book will win the author £5,000.

Bucknor is the regional chair of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, DY Bechard from Canada and Dr Antonia MacDonald-Smythe from St Lucia completing the adjudication panel.

'The End of the Alphabet', which won the Best First Book award in the Canada and Caribbean segment of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Far left: Lawrence Hill's 'The Book of Negroes', which took Best Book at the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and the Caribbean Region).