The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF2025) presents the winners and finalists for the Short Fiction Competitions. Kodi-Anne Brown received the Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize. Brandon Mc Ivor received the Award for Writers in the Caribbean. Congratulations to the winners, finalists, and the BCLF team!
WINNERS
Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize: This prize honors Caribbean-American writers whose work speaks to the complexities of identity, migration, and belonging across the diaspora. It celebrates literature as both inheritance and innovation, carrying memory forward while carving new paths
Kodi-Anne Brown is a Jamaica-born writer, editor, and community specialist whose work is grounded in arts, culture, and community empowerment. With academic and professional interests spanning postcolonial futurity, decolonial ecology, and multiculturalism, Brown’s writing interrogates new ways of relating to the world and expressing the self. Complementary experiences in tourism, education, social work, and the performing arts have further shaped her ability to lead, collaborate, and execute dynamic projects across diverse communities. Fluent in both English and French, she continues to expand her practice through opportunities in communications, media, community engagement, and the literary arts.
Award for Writers in the Caribbean: This award recognizes writers working within the Caribbean, whose stories root themselves in the region’s landscapes, histories, and living traditions. It affirms the Caribbean as both source and horizon, where storytelling continues to be a vital act of survival and creation.
Brandon Mc Ivor was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago and holds a BSc in English Literature from New York University. He currently teaches English in Ehime, Japan, while continuing to build a literary practice that explores the craft and circulation of storytelling. His work has appeared in The Caribbean Writer and in Akashic Books’ flash fiction series, among other publications. He was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Fiction Prize in 2020 for his work Finger, Spinster, Serial Killer. Both writer and marketer, Mc Ivor is deeply interested in the forms and voices through which stories are told, seeking to move audiences through fiction, poetry, and creative communication alike.
FINALISTS
- “The Rent Collector” – Nakisha Sinclair (Guyana)
- “The Bohike Boy” – Jon Negroni (Puerto Rico)
- “The Shine of Letting Go” – Nadili Soman (Trinidad and Tobago)
- “Americana” – Miguel Oniel Díaz Ramírez (Dominican Republic)
For more information, see https://www.instagram.com/p/DOMJ5VHkVX6/
The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF2025) presents the winners and finalists for the Short Fiction Competitions. Kodi-Anne Brown received the Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize. Brandon Mc Ivor received the Award for Writers in the Caribbean. Congratulations to the winners, finalists, and the BCLF team! WINNERS Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize: This prize honors Caribbean-American writers whose work speaks to the
