Caribbean Beat — November/December 2018 (#154)

closeup
A writer
with a plan
When Trinidadian Kevin Jared Hosein
was announced as the winner of the
prestigious 2018 Commonwealth
Short Story Prize, it brought a shot
of fame that any writer might covet.
But this was no overnight success,
explains Shivanee Ramlochan —
rather, the culmination of a steady,
wilful devotion to writing
Photography by Mark Lyndersay
Kevin Jared Hosein meets
me for our interview on
the day V.S. Naipaul dies.
The 2018 Commonwealth
Short Story Prize winner is
neither dismissively snide nor
desperately heartbroken at Naipaul’s passing. It
may seem surprising that a prominent literary
son of the Trinidadian soil has no strong feelings
about Naipaul, one way or another, but it’s true of
Hosein, who fields my queries on the 2001 Nobel
Laureate with an unperturbed equanimity. This isn’t
hubris. Hosein doesn’t imagine himself superior to
Naipaul’s influence or legacy. This is something else
entirely: it’s the year in which Kevin Jared Hosein
finds himself a household commodity, at least in
homes lined with books.
“A lot of it is luck,” Hosein says baldly, referring
to his success. This from a man who tried
to inveigle his way into a bachelor’s degree in
literature or journalism (whichever would have
him), despite not having studied literature for “O”-
levels. It wasn’t on offer at his secondary school,
he explains, though this didn’t dampen his desire
to live in worlds of books. The opposite seems
to have happened: from early on, Hosein wrote
prolifically and read with deep appetite. Stephen
King was a childhood staple, followed by Cormac
McCarthy. Ask Hosein which Caribbean book has
most influenced his sensibility as both reader and
writer, and he’s likely to reach for Harold “Sonny”
Ladoo’s 1972 novel No Pain Like This Body. “It made
me understand how diverse this whole setting is,”
Hosein says, referencing the small agrarian Hindu
community in which Ladoo’s brutal, uncompromising
narrative unfolds.
Trinidadian and Caribbean authors find
themselves in something of a golden age. In 2017,
Penguin Random House’s Writers Academy named
the NGC Bocas Lit Fest one of the world’s top literary
festivals. The Forward Prize for the year’s best
poetry collection has been awarded to Caribbean
poets in a trinity from 2014 to 2016: Kei Miller,
Claudia Rankine, Vahni Capildeo. Hosein’s own
Commonwealth win this year is the second time
in a row the international prize has been scooped
by a Trinidadian: Ingrid Persaud took it last year.
Betting pundits might not be blamed for setting
their sights on 2019 as a crowning hat-trick for T&T
talent. Though, as Hosein soberly comments, talent
might be the least of the equation. He’s equally
calm, stoic even, when it comes to prizes.
“I don’t ever think about winning a next prize.
The prize is a validation, yes, but you can’t expect
nothing from nobody.” It’s not animated cheerleading,
but you shouldn’t expect that from Hosein,
who doesn’t deal in false literary hope. His plans
to bamboozle his way into the humanities at the
University of the West Indies didn’t pan out, so he
graduated in his other interests, earning a degree
in biology and environmental studies. He doesn’t
regret this, or think of it as a second-string career
path: teaching science is his bread and butter, and
60 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM