Guyana Prize Literary Competition 2025 returned with a brand new location and renewed power for the literary group within the nation.
From July third to sixth, 2025, Guyana staged its most bold Guyana Prize Literary Competition thus far, in tandem with the revival of the Guyana Prize for Literature. For the primary time, festivities had been held each in Georgetown and at Anna Regina on the Essequibo Coast, opening entry to rural communities and marking a major growth of the pageant’s attain and inclusivity.
Based in 1987, the Guyana Prize for Literature skilled an extended hiatus after 2015. Its reactivation in 2023 restored a nationwide literary custom, and by 2025, a sturdy new construction had emerged: annual awards, digital submissions, and expanded classes together with fiction, poetry, drama, inventive non‑fiction, and youth literary awards for brief story and poetry.
Competition Highlights embody:
- Exhibitions of prize-winning and shortlisted literature curated by the College of Guyana library.
- Masterclasses led by celebrated Caribbean and diasporic writers—Kei Miller (Jamaica), Celeste Mohammed (Trinidad), and British critic Stewart Brown—overlaying fiction, poetry, inventive non-fiction, and drama.
- The Nationwide Poetry Slam Finals that includes prime spoken‑phrase abilities with visitor judges together with Kei Miller and Camille Quamina.
- Dramatic efficiency of Don’t Ask Me Why by Rae Wiltshire, the 2023 Prize‑successful play, staged on the Nationwide Cultural Centre as a part of the Ministry’s “Write to Stage” programme.
Awards Ceremony & Winners
The awards ceremony was held on July 4th, 2025, on the Atlantic Convention Centre, Pegasus Lodge in Georgetown, with Prime Minister Mark Phillips presiding and delivering remarks praising the Prize’s renewal and future promise .
This 12 months marked a historic achievement: Kenneth Puddicombe grew to become the primary creator in Prize historical past to win three main classes—Drama (The Final Straw), Non‑Fiction (Pages from a Pocket book), and Fiction (Finest First E-book)—in a single 12 months. Beforehand, he had received Fiction in 2023, making him the Prize’s first-ever triple‑crown winner.
Different notable winners included:
- Oonya Kempadoo – Senior Fiction (Finest E-book) for Nanki
- David Dabydeen – Fiction (2nd Prize) for Candy Li Jie
- Berkley Semple – Junior Fiction & Finest First E-book for Kipling Plass; third prize in Senior Fiction
- Jessica Persaud – Poetry (Senior & Junior) for Aphrodite
- Janae Bristol, Italy Ton‑Chung, Mortimer Duke, Jenatta Holder, and others in youth and poetry classes
Along with the awards, the pageant featured public studying periods the place winners—like Puddicombe and Berkley Semple—shared work, mentioned themes, and engaged straight with audiences. Semple’s Kipling Plass, a coming‑of‑age novel exploring identification and trauma in Nineteen Eighties Guyana, and Puddicombe’s The Final Straw, a tense drama about home abuse in early Nineties Georgetown, resonated deeply.
The Guyana Prize Competition 2025 represents a literary coming‑of‑age: from infrastructural revival to widespread nationwide cultural engagement. Youth prizes, drama, new classes, and group outreach replicate a renewed dedication to positioning Guyanese voices on par with Caribbean literary centres. The dominance of Kenneth Puddicombe, and the popularity of abilities like Kempadoo, Dabydeen, Persaud, Semple, and Bristol, spotlight a dynamic new era shaping Guyana’s literary future.
With its mix of award‑successful works, reside performances, inclusive programming, and regional presence, the Guyana Prize Literary Competition 2025 cemented itself as a cornerstone cultural occasion—and a beacon for Caribbean literary expression.