Fiction writer Rashad Hosein has won the 2022 NGC Bocas Youth Writer Award for his short story ‘Saga’.

The story, which also won the John Steinbeck Award for Fiction, explores grief, loss and love in the context of indentureship and Indo-Trinidadian generational trauma.

Lisa Allen-Agostini, award-winning author and chair of the judging panel, said:

“Unanimously, we found [Rashad Hosein’s] writing on par with the work of writers of much greater age… His accomplished résumé is a testament to both his talent and his tenacity… I guarantee this is not the last time you will hear his name calling in a forum like this.”

The NGC Bocas Youth Writer Award is an inter-genre literary accolade that was launched in 2021 in Trinidad and Tobago and targets young writers of local birth or citizenship, age 25 and under. You can read more here.

Rashad was previously also a finalist for the 2020 BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean and has been longlisted for the 2021 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize as well as twice shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2019 and 2021).

Congratulations, Rashad!

You can follow Rashad on Twitter @RashadHosein.