The latest release from Caribbean publisher Peekash Press celebrates some of the major new voices in Anglophone Caribbean literature

Difficult parents and lost children, unfaithful spouses and spectral lovers, mysterious ancestors and fierce bloodlines--the stories, poems, and memoirs in this new anthology tackle everything that's most complicated and thrilling about family and history in the Caribbean. Collecting new writing by finalists for the Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize, a groundbreaking award administered by the Bocas Lit Fest, Thicker Than Water shows us how a new generation of Caribbean authors address perennial questions of love, betrayal, and memory in small places where personal and collective histories are often troublingly intertwined.

From the Introduction by Funso Aiyejina:

Thicker Than Water confirms that the Caribbean is blessed with quietly penetrating, effortlessly urbane, and socially committed prose writers; environmentally passionate and historically anchored creative nonfiction writers; and thematically courageous and stylistically daring poets who manipulate language to create poetry that is daring, engaging, fluent, and confident. These are writers who are emotionally complex and critically engaged. They are the heirs to a multistoried and multifaceted Caribbean literary tradition that is as multichromatic and multilayered as its complicated history. These writers boldly engage with a Caribbean that is not constrained by its clichéd images of sea, sun, and sand. They are products of their history but they are not hog-tied by it. Here are writers who see what many do not see and dare to speak what many fear to think."

Featuring brand-new writing from: Lisa Allen-Agostini, Nicolette Bethel, Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné, Vashti Bowlah, Richard Georges, Zahra Gordon, Barbara Jenkins, Lelawatee Manoo-Rahming, Ira Mathur, Diana McCaulay, Sharon Millar, Monica Minott, Philip Nanton, Xavier Navarro Aquino, Shivanee Ramlochan, Judy Raymond, Hazel Simmons-McDonald, Lynn Sweeting, and Peta-Gaye V. Williams.

Funso Aiyejina is a poet, short story writer, and playwright, born in Nigeria and living in Trinidad and Tobago. He is Professor Emeritus and former Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. His collection of short fiction, The Legend of the Rockhills and Other Stories, won the 2000 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (Africa). He is a widely published critic on African and West Indian literature and culture, and deputy director of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Trinidad and Tobago's annual literary festival. He is the author of Earl Lovelace (Caribbean Biography Series) and the editor of Thicker Than Water.