Accusations against the Prize are false and without merit (Part 2)

Dear Editor,
Paloma Mohamed is now highly successful and recognised. But she was once a local dramatist and poet who had not yet achieved any international accolades when she won her first Guyana Prize for the play Duenne. She progressed from there to win more Guyana Prizes for Best Book of Drama, including for Anansi’s Way (2006).
A local unknown, unpublished writer, with his first collection of short stories, became the youngest winner of the Guyana Prize to date. Ruel Johnson emerged as a significant talent, recognised by the judges as outstanding for his Ariadne and Other Stories, in 2002. He won the Best First Book of Fiction, having entered an unpublished manuscript to defeat two published shortlisted books. His other first-time manuscript was a collection of poems: The Enormous Night, which was shortlisted for the First Book of Poetry.
It was against foreign competition that the second youngest writer to win the Guyana Prize emerged from the local writing community. Subraj Singh also won the Guyana Prize for the Best First Book of Fiction in 2014, for Rebell and Other Stories. Once again, a first time local writer was identified by the Guyana Prize judges as a major talent when there were on the shortlist established intellectuals with published books living overseas. So-called hallowed and chosen overseas based writers must have been once more overlooked by the clique of judges, who must have bypassed their friends to award the prize to an unknown, disadvantaged local.
Increasing belief in themselves must have been among the gains for local Guyanese writers when yet another one of them beat the overseas competition in 2012. Dramatist Mosa Telford, a local writer with no previous publication or international achievement, won the Guyana Prize for Drama with Sauda. This time among the vanquished was a successful three-time Prize winner named Bascom, who was by then resident overseas.
Neither must it be forgotten that Cassia Alphonso, an entirely new poet writing verse in Creolese, also won as a first-timer living in Guyana. Very significantly, she shared the Poetry Prize with the very established writer Ian McDonald, who, as a local resident, became a multiple winner of the Prize for Poetry.
Another distinguished local resident won the Best First Book of Poetry with an unpublished manuscript when Dennis Craig was awarded for On The Seashore. Although a veteran writer, it was his first collection.
Among that significant list of Guyana Prize winners are works which were entered as unpublished manuscripts. They had to compete against published books entered by publishers from abroad. It has been a consistent policy of the juries that these manuscripts had to be of publishable quality to be awarded a Prize.
It ought to be obvious by now that the Guyana Prize created opportunities for local writers who were previously unknown to gain recognition and to emerge.
Surely, the Prize has helped to create an environment in which a number of local developing writers are motivated to write and to improve. The list of examples provided above is evidence that many of them have achieved; some have gone on to become more successful, more accomplished, and to join the corps of established writers.
Those examples prove the accusations against the Prize to be false, ultra vires, and without merit.

Yours faithfully,
Al Creighton
Secretary, Guyana
Prize