Carolyn Allen reads from 'Reading By Lightning', the Commonwealth Writers' Prize winner of the Best First Book Award for Canada and the Caribbean. - Photo by Mel Cooke
After Dr. Erna Brodber had opened the envelope last Wednesday evening and announced Marina Endicott had won the Best Book Award in the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and the Caribbean), she said, "So, the women have it".
There was a chuckle from the approximately two-thirds capacity audience at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, UWI, Mona.
Earlier Christopher Duggan, political and economic counsellor at the Canadian High Commission, had announced Joan Thomas' Reading By Lightning as winner of the Best First Book Award for the region.
Dramatised reading
Although the announcements were the reason for the gathering, the actual formalities were a small part of a delightful evening, readings from the winning books following the opening of the envelopes.
Carolyn Allen, Dr Michael Bucknor and Lisa Brown took the dramatised route in delivering an excerpt from Reading By Lightning where the heat of the gospel seared the sinner. Allen was eventually penitent (who still observes a new convert and remarks to herself "she has done this before. She was saved last summer.") and Bucknor the black-robed preacher ("You have come to mock, you have come to sneer"), Brown narrating as the pair sat on the bench that was the sole prop.
The lights went down on Allen and Bucknor leaving together slowly, singing.
Tanya Shirley read from Good to a Fault, altering her tone as she switched between a woman about to do chemotherapy and the overly cheerful nurse introducing her to the highly dubious delights of improved treatment ("We have made some real improvements in nausea.").
The evening was hosted by Nicholas Laughlin, a regional judge of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Bucknor is the competition's regional chair.
There was also a dramatic staging of Olive Senior's Gardening in the Tropics, the 1987 Commonwealth Writers' Prize winner. Brodber won in 1989.
The UWI drummers were moving with Rastaman Chant, CARISMA band closing off the announcement function.
Now in its 23rd year, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize honours fiction writing in English.