Guyanese writer Imam Baksh was last evening awarded the Burt Award for Caribbean Literature.
Baksh, who is a three-time winner of the Guyana Annual’s Henry Josiah Writing Short Story for Children prize, received the prize for his manuscript, Children of the Spider.
The work, which is his first full-length novel, is described in an article from Bocas Lit Fest as capturing readers with “the otherness of its world, its intrigue and mystery.”
According to the award webpage, the Burt Award for Caribbean Literature was established by CODE – a Canadian charitable organisation that has been advancing literacy and learning for 55 years – in collaboration with the Literary Prizes Foundation. The Award is administered in Port of Spain by the Bocas Lit Fest, the literary organisation that founded the largest annual literary festival of the Caribbean region, the NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
In March, 2014 a Burt Award Young Adult Writers Workshop was hosted in Guyana for writers interested in entering the contest. Canadian Richard Scrimger, an established writer of young adult fiction with five published children’s novels, was invited to chair the workshop. Baksh was a participant at this workshop.
He described the workshop to Stabroek News as “… an informal interaction where we discussed what goes into a story for young people and what specifically Bocas wants in their stories.” He added, “A lot of young people stories you get are preachy or they are focused on long ago when the person who wrote it (who is now old) was growing up so you are getting stories about the 40s and 50s and a lot of bucolic stuff about growing up in the country. It’s not something that engages modern children.”
He noted that Bocas Lit Fest and he seemed to have a lot of common philosophies about writing in general and especially writing for children. In his words, these philosophies include “the idea that you have to pull them [children] in with something they want to read. It’s not about giving them a message, every book has a message. My book is full of messages; all kinds of stuff about taking responsibility, about friendship, about environment. But it’s not something I sat down and said I’m going to tell the children about keeping the turtles safe. The turtles are there and we get the idea that they should be kept safe by the end of the book. But no I sat down to write something that was fun and that they would read from page one and say, ‘What’s coming up next?’ People miss this; they always sit down and think, ‘If I’m going to write for children I have to give them something important.’ And they miss the first part, which is if you going to write for children please give them something fun. Children of the Spider is certainly that.”
Set mostly in Guyana with a female Amerindian protagonist, the work is a fantasy novel that invites the reader to go on an adventure in which the main character comes to Guyana through a portal from an alternate world.
Baksh said the title is very relevant to the themes in the novel as it involves a lot of the idea of youth.
“The main characters are teens, three of them. There is also this whole history that stretches back thousands of years, two actual mythological spiders and you get to see this descent of the line. A lot of focus on the idea of generational change and how different generations interact with each other as they come down the line and how mentalities change generation after generation,” he said.
When asked about his motivation for writing, Baksh spoke of starting to write in his 20s, with the idea of being a professional writer. His intent, he said, was to be the next Stephen King so the idea of writing adventurous stories with strong plots was with him. “Kids aren’t that different from adults. Adults tend to read stories they enjoy,” he said.
A trained teacher with a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Guyana, he spoke of some of the issues he has faced with his choice to write children’s stories. “I get from a lot of Guyanese and Caribbean adults ‘Why are you wasting time writing that kid’s stuff? Why don’t you write serious stuff?’ The idea exists that serious and boring are over here and fun and light is over here and the two don’t mix. I don’t like that separation… I like the myths. I want to read about Gilgamesh and then I want to read about Robin Hood but Robin Hood doesn’t go around lecturing people about the importance of the forest. Robin Hood goes and steals from rich people and then he runs and hides and shoots bows and arrows. It’s an adventure. But we still learn about that time and Prince John, even if it is misrepresented,” he said.
He further explained that he has always enjoyed fantasy but never thought of writing for children. “I admired Tom Clancy and other thriller writers who all write for adults. The idea of writing for children was never on my radar until about 2003 when the Guyana Annual started the Henry Josiah prize. A colleague encouraged me to enter and I won. I won the next year, then I took a break went to Canada and came back and won it again. So I won three years with short stories for children 9 to 15. So I noticed that I’m finding an audience and I have a good voice, [a] seemingly better suited voice for this audience than for what I was doing before,” he noted.
While he writes other pieces under a pseudonym, he writes children’s pieces under his real name.
“Because the first story I feel I got any notice for was a children’s story written under my real name for the Guyana Annual, I’m careful not to use my name for work not meant for children. I feel I can only use my real name for those stories now. I don’t want a parent to pick up a book with my name on it and then you have a situation or scene not meant for children. If I write with adult situations and adult mentality, I’m going to use a different name,” he said.
Baksh has won Cdn$10,000 as part of his prize while Diana McCauley, from Jamaica, won the second prize of Cdn$7,000 for her novel The Dolphin Catchers. The third prize of Cdn$5,000 went to Lynn Joseph, of Trinidad and Tobago, for Dancing in the Rain. Each winner will also have 2,500 copies of their work printed and distributed to schools and libraries around the region.
According to CODE, the finalists were selected by a jury administered by the Bocas Lit Fest and made up of writers, literacy experts and academics from the Caribbean and Canada.
At the award ceremony last evening CODE Executive Director Scott Walter is reported on the website as saying, “We’re very excited that all three winning works this year are manuscripts, as it means the Awards are succeeding in helping generate new writing. A key objective is to encourage authors to write for young people, regardless of whether or not they already have a publishing deal.”
He added, “We know we can turn more youth on to reading if they have access to amazing books that truly speak to them and our award, combined with a guaranteed purchase, allows this to happen. It’s win-win-win, as the market for Caribbean publishers is strengthened, Caribbean authors are rewarded for their craft and many thousands of entertaining, engaging books get into the hands of Caribbean youth.”
In congratulating the winners, Marina Salandy-Brown, founder of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest said that this was “another fantastic achievement by our region’s writers.”
The Guyana Book Foundation, which has been given the responsibility of distributing books to schools and libraries for the winners of the 2014 Burt Award for Caribbean Literature, last month congratulated Baksh for being shortlisted for the prize.
In a press release the Foundation said, “… Baksh has started the race; one which we hope will be followed by many more talented Guyanese.”
