HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon said that Cabinet has approved the submission by the organising committee of the Guyana Prize for Literature concerning prizes to be offered for the 2010 awards. The HPS said that in addition to the established Guyana Prize, Cabinet approved expenditure for additional awards of prizes. He said that expenditure that was additional will be used for awarding the first Caribbean Writers’ Award for the Anglophone Caribbean, and hosting the writers’ workshops that would be held around the time of the award ceremony.
“Those two additions to the prize and to the event were all subsequent to engagements with the President and the community during the previous awards ceremony and also during Carifesta in discussions again with the President and regionally acclaimed writers,” he said.
Asked why the exclusivity to Anglophone writers, Luncheon said that it might be a challenge to judge works done in other languages.
The HPS said that for the 2010 ceremony, Cabinet also agreed on the recommendation to honour Wilson Harris during those ceremonies. Harris, of ‘Palace of the Peacock’ fame, was knighted earlier this year by Queen Elizabeth II.