Shortlisted for the 2025 OMC Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
Settings . . . are described in deft strokes . . . characters [conjured] with equal dexterity. Each story . . . delivers with integrity and verve . . . confidently and persuasively.”
— 2025 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature Judges
Excerpt
Brief
“La Pastora was tucked in a corner behind Xhango, who was striking a Hulk pose in red cutoff pants. A yellow-haired deity in a blue cape with relief gold jewelry on his chest brandished a sword that blocked La Pastora’s face—goddess upstaged.”
Long
"Inside, the store looked different. The bare wooden counter was still there, but opposite the counter were shelves from the floor to just above Ronald’s head. The eye-level shelves were crowded with red and pink candles shaped like vaginas, penises, and humans. Below those were candles in glass containers: bright yellow, white, black, red, green, and blue. Under those were foil-wrapped incense sticks and dark bottles with the names of the oils they contained written in black marker on white masking tape. Ronald took some sage incense sticks from the shelf and walked to the back of the line of customers that ran along the counter. When it was his turn, the girl leaned her shaved head to one side and asked, “What you need help with today?”
Synopsis
Brief
Shortlisted for the 2025 OMC Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, "The Believers: Stories" A. K.’s wondrous debut story collection, imbues people connected to the Caribbean with power hardly visible to outsiders. In these tales we encounter predatory churches, doomed lovers, babies born in secret and boys with wings. The Believers is at once poignant, subversive, and utterly haunting.
Long
Shortlisted for the 2025 OMC Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, A. K.’s wondrous debut collection, "The Believers: Stories," is an intimate look at how people use power and agency in communities on the periphery—where no one conforms to type. In the title story, to leave a seemingly friendly and supportive church, a family must risk everything. In “The Iridescent Blue-Black Boy with Wings (After Márquez),” children find a winged boy in a seaside village in Tobago. In “Ready for the Revolution?” uncertain lovers play rough with identity politics, and are set on an unexpected path. In “Love,” a scandalous affair produces a love child, born with a dark omen, while in Exile,” a pregnant teen from a staunchly religious family, is exiled to have her baby in secret. A gardener in “Love Story No. 8,” falls for a rich man’s daughter to disastrous ends, while in “Inside,” a young woman visits Brooklyn to find out what exactly is happening with her kept man and her money, while in “Drink the Dew,” love and wrath become one. The Believers is at once poignant and subversive, utterly haunting and unforgettable.
Biography
Brief
A. K. Herman is a Caribbean poet and fiction writer, born in Scarborough, Tobago. Her debut collection, The Believers: Stories, is shortlisted for the 2025 OMC Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her writing has appeared in Doek! Literary Journal, Lolwe, The Waterstone Review, Shenandoah Literary Journal and others. A. K. lives in New York and is working on a novel.
Long
A. K. Herman is a Caribbean poet and fiction writer, born in Scarborough, Tobago. Her debut collection, The Believers: Stories, was shortlisted for the 2025 OMC Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. A. K. grew up in Trinidad, with her parents and nine other children, a mix siblings and cousins. She left Trinidad to study painting but took a different path to graduate summa cum laude from Brooklyn College in Art History. A. K. has participated in various writing and poetry workshops, including Cave Canem, and the City College of New York.
As a child, her mother and aunt told herstories about the people, beliefs, and practices of Tobago and Trinidad, in a distinct story telling tradition in which there is a thin veil between the visible and the invisible, and where ordinary people are powerful heros, heroines, monsters even, guiding their own destiny, in ways that may be stranger than fiction. A. K.’s writing has appeared in various print and online journals, including Doek! Literary Journal, Lolwe, The Waterstone Review, Shenandoah Literary Journal and others. A. K. lives in New York and is working on a novel.