Shortlists for the 2024 Guyana Prize in Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction, and Drama, as well as the Youth Awards in Poetry and Short Story have been announced. Winners will be revealed at an awards ceremony on Friday, July 4, 2025, at the Atlantic Conference Centre, Pegasus Hotel, in Georgetown, Guyana.
Hansib Publications shared that Abigail Persaud Cheddie’s debut novel—Ixora Mara, Sourhouse (young adult fiction)—has been shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Literature 2024. Hansib share the following quote, describing the novel as “a smart and emotionally rich exploration of Guyanese identity, brain drain and the psychological toll of being left behind in a globalizing world. Her social commentary on education, poverty and class is incisive. The prose is often poetic. Scenic descriptions are immersive and intelligent, balancing satire with beauty.”
Description: Ixora Mara invites her only friend Suzie to her seventh birthday party and Suzie promises to come. But Suzie does not come. Instead, she disappears from Peaside Pasture. When Ixora fixates on Suzie’s empty house across the street, wondering where Suzie has gone, she feels a sensation like a burst lime spreading through her body, turning her sour.
As she spends the next two decades of her life staring at Suzie’s empty house and waiting for Suzie to return, Ixora struggles to slow the lime juice from engulfing her body – her sour house. Must she forever be a walking lime? Or when others start disappearing from Peaside, can Ixora control her sour long enough to single-handedly fight back at the thing she calls The Miaplambo?
Abigail Persaud Cheddie has taught English Literature at the University of Guyana for more than fifteen years and previously at her alma mater Queen’s College. Abigail is drawn to narratives of rural Guyanese and Caribbean life, more of which she wishes were available during her childhood. Ixora Mara, Sourhouse is Abigail’s debut novel and her contribution to the growing body of Guyanese fiction, inspired by home and written from home.
For more information, see St. Kitts-Nevis News, Events and Information and https://www.stabroeknews.com/2025/06/21/news/guyana/guyana-prize-for-literature-announces-2024-shortlists-across-six-categories/
For purchasing information, see https://www.hansibpublications.com/epages/es147335.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/es147335/Products/HP276