Guyana Prize Literary Festival 2025 returned with a new location and renewed energy for the literary community in the country.
From July 3rd to 6th, 2025, Guyana staged its most ambitious Guyana Prize Literary Festival to date, in tandem with the revival of the Guyana Prize for Literature. For the first time, festivities were held both in Georgetown and at Anna Regina on the Essequibo Coast, opening access to rural communities and marking a significant expansion of the festival’s reach and inclusivity.
Founded in 1987, the Guyana Prize for Literature experienced a long hiatus after 2015. Its reactivation in 2023 restored a national literary tradition, and by 2025, a robust new structure had emerged: annual awards, digital submissions, and expanded categories including fiction, poetry, drama, creative non‑fiction, and youth literary awards for short story and poetry.
Festival Highlights include:
- Exhibitions of prize-winning and shortlisted literature curated by the University of Guyana library.
- Masterclasses led by celebrated Caribbean and diasporic writers—Kei Miller (Jamaica), Celeste Mohammed (Trinidad), and British critic Stewart Brown—covering fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and drama.
- The National Poetry Slam Finals featuring top spoken‑word talents with guest judges including Kei Miller and Camille Quamina.
- Dramatic performance of Don’t Ask Me Why by Rae Wiltshire, the 2023 Prize‑winning play, staged at the National Cultural Centre as part of the Ministry’s “Write to Stage” programme.
Awards Ceremony & Winners
The awards ceremony was held on July 4th, 2025, at the Atlantic Conference Centre, Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown, with Prime Minister Mark Phillips presiding and delivering remarks praising the Prize’s renewal and future promise .
This year marked a historic achievement: Kenneth Puddicombe became the first author in Prize history to win three major categories—Drama (The Last Straw), Non‑Fiction (Pages from a Notebook), and Fiction (Best First Book)—in a single year. Previously, he had won Fiction in 2023, making him the Prize’s first-ever triple‑crown winner.
Other notable winners included:
- Oonya Kempadoo – Senior Fiction (Best Book) for Nanki
- David Dabydeen – Fiction (2nd Prize) for Sweet Li Jie
- Berkley Semple – Junior Fiction & Best First Book for Kipling Plass; 3rd 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 categories
In addition to the awards, the festival featured public reading sessions where winners—like Puddicombe and Berkley Semple—shared work, discussed themes, and engaged directly with audiences. Semple’s Kipling Plass, a coming‑of‑age novel exploring identity and trauma in 1980s Guyana, and Puddicombe’s The Last Straw, a tense drama about domestic abuse in early 1990s Georgetown, resonated deeply.
The Guyana Prize Festival 2025 represents a literary coming‑of‑age: from infrastructural revival to widespread national cultural engagement. Youth prizes, drama, new categories, and community outreach reflect a renewed commitment to positioning Guyanese voices on par with Caribbean literary centres. The dominance of Kenneth Puddicombe, and the recognition of talents like Kempadoo, Dabydeen, Persaud, Semple, and Bristol, highlight a dynamic new generation shaping Guyana’s literary future.
With its blend of award‑winning works, live performances, inclusive programming, and regional presence, the Guyana Prize Literary Festival 2025 cemented itself as a cornerstone cultural event—and a beacon for Caribbean literary expression.