One of the major events on the local cultural calendar is the Guyana Prize Literary Festival which takes place next weekend from February 10 to 12. The most important item in that timetable is the Awards Ceremony for the Guyana Prize for Literature slated for the evening of February 10 at the National Cultural Centre. It will be followed by a star-studded weekend of literary and dramatic presentations including from some leading Caribbean writers and literary/cultural personalities. This festival has been placed in the season of Mashramani to enhance and vary the entertainment as well as to lend considerable intellectual depth to the celebration of the nation of Guyana as a republic.
The Guyana Prize for Literature was re-established in 2022 after it had been discontinued by the government at the time in 2016. In the new dispensation it is not surprising that there are changes; some progressive, some to suit the style of the new government, and others that are neither welcome nor advisable. The prize and the festival that celebrates it now operate out of the strange new environment of a ministry instead of the university that housed it previously.