After a more than six-year hiatus, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Charles Ramson yesterday announced the return of the Guyana Prize for Literature with changes that will see it being an annual event and future plans for a festival and symposia across the country.
“It is an important day for the world of the creative industry here. Today is the announcement that we are going to immediately launch out the Guyana Prize for Literature,” Ramson yesterday told a press conference, as he emphasised that it was a directive from President Irfaan Ali.
Noting key changes to the event first introduced by the late President Desmond Hoyte and abruptly curtailed by the David Granger administration in 2015, Ramson said that it was the aim of this government to fully develop the arts and that the prize will now be an annual event.
“The folks who are very keen in the literary arts space are going to be excited to know that this is the supporting platform where they can get their works published,” he said while adding that a key objective of the re-introduction was “so that everybody is aware that this type of developmental platform exists.”
“Most of the people who are connected to writing, drama, poetry etcetera, they don’t have a next stage; a progressive kind of opportunity for them to get their works published and for them to be recognised in Guyana for the work they are doing. That is why it is important for the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, in particular, to give that progressive platform, for them to get their works published and for them to be recognised,” Ramson explained.
The literary awards programme will now be an annual event, a youth category will be added with separate prizes for males and females, as well as a prize for non-fiction.
There is also now a publication award that will be an additional $400,000 and Best First Book which has $600,000 up for grabs.
The announcement yesterday was lauded by 2002 Best First Fiction manuscript winner, Ruel Johnson, who had been lobbying over the years for its return, but to no avail.
“This is something long overdue. The last prize award was in 2015 and there was a call for entries in 2017, in which many writers had submitted, in good faith, expecting a prize to hold. It was never held. Nobody knows, to this day why the prize was technically ‘scrapped’.
So this is a great development for literature in general,” he told Stabroek News last evening when contacted.
Johnson, who is now a Technical Officer of Culture at the ministry is a part of the team that was behind the prize formatting. He had described the APNU+AFC government’s actions in relation to the prize as the low-point in a pattern of decimation of culture.
“There has been a deliberate policy of cultural initiatives being put on a treadmill at best, and for purely partisan political reasons. The result has been the actual loss to Guyana of millions of US dollars in aid, and that is merely the monetary cost – the larger intangible cost has been widespread and incalculable,” Johnson had lamented in a Facebook post on the issue.
Similar sentiments were expressed by the longtime secretary of the Prize’s management council, Al Creighton.
Writing on the prize in his weekly arts column in the Sunday Stabroek back in 2019, Creighton declared that “it is inconceivable that this priceless institution should be shut down.”
He had noted that as it stood then, the Guyana Prize has been discontinued.
“Applications were made, there was a stakeholder consultation at the Theatre Guild, recommendations were made, but funds have not been released to allow its continuation, and there is no word on when or whether that will happen,” Creighton lamented.
He described the Guyana Prize as one of two distinct advantages Guyana has developed in the field of culture and the arts, stating that it has been the pride (and envy) of the Caribbean, winning praise, respect and international image for the nation while playing a valued role in the development of their respective fields in Guyana.
Creighton had explained that the Prize is one of only two in the world which trains writers or assists the beginners. The other is the Commonwealth Foundation, which runs the Commonwealth Writers Prizes.
Creighton is also back on the Committee and was yesterday also pleased with the announcement.
At the press conference, he pointed out that the Prize would not be the only event to promote literary appreciation here as there will be many supporting activities and they “will come on board and will be made known.”
Stabroek News did not receive an invitation to this press conference.
