St. Thomas’ Own Nicole Sealey Earns Prestigious Nomination for the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize

The 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature has announced its distinguished shortlist, celebrating the exemplary works of three Caribbean authors across diverse genres. Among the honorees, Nicole Sealey, hailing from St. Thomas, has been recognized as the Poetry category winner for her compelling work, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure. Sealey’s innovative approach transforms the 2015 report on Michael Brown’s tragic death in Ferguson, Missouri, into a profound reflection on contemporary societal challenges and the act of witnessing history.

Nicole Sealey, who grew up in Apopka, Florida, has an impressive educational background with a Master of Liberal Arts in Africana Studies from the University of South Florida and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from New York University. Over six years, Sealey meticulously edited the Ferguson report, reconfiguring its narrative to offer new perspectives and insights.

In her conversation with Erik Gleibermann for Poets & Writers, Sealey shared the fulfillment she found in reinterpreting the document, suggesting that by erasing parts of the text, she was symbolically addressing and ameliorating the original incident’s impact. This method reflects a deep engagement with the material and a creative pursuit of justice through art.

The Ferguson Report: An Erasure has not only earned the accolade of being named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker but also adds to Sealey’s growing list of achievements. Her previous works, Ordinary Beast and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, have also received significant acclaim, earning her awards from prestigious institutions such as Princeton University, the American Academy in Rome, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Joining Sealey on the shortlist are Kevin Jared Hosein from Trinidad & Tobago, recognized in the fiction category for Hungry Ghosts, and Safiya Sinclair from Jamaica, awarded in non-fiction for How to Say Babylon. The grand prize winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature will be unveiled on April 27, an announcement eagerly awaited by the literary community and readers worldwide.