It was sometime in 2000, back when I was months away from defending my PhD, and working full-time for the Arthritis Community Research & Evaluation Unit in Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. My publisher called to tell me that my first published book, my short story collection Sweet Like Saltwater, had won the Guyana Prize, which is the national book award of Guyana, the nation of my birth.
I was shocked and elated. And the adventure that would unfold in the coming months, as I traveled to Guyana for the first time as an adult, is a complex story that I have always intended to put to paper. But I will not do so now.
Because it has almost happened again. My latest collection of short stories, A Memory of Flowers and Coconut, has just been announced as one of the three finalists for the Guyana Prize this year.
