Dominican writer Zephrine Royer wins 2026 Elizabeth Nunez Award

Dominican writer and documentary producer Zephrine Royer has won the 2026 BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean with her short story “River Mouth.”

The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF) announced Royer as the winner on Saturday, September 12, during its Short Fiction Story Celebration, held as part of the festival’s 2026 edition in Brooklyn, New York.

The festival ran from September 9 to 13 under the theme “One Hand Don’t Clap: Caribbean Worlds, Writing Towards the Future.”

According to a press release from the writer’s camp, Dominica had a particularly strong showing in this year’s short fiction competitions, with two Dominican writers featuring among the finalists for the festival’s two flagship prizes.

Along with Royer’s win in the Writers in the Caribbean category, fellow Dominican writer Kwame Labassiere was named a finalist for the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize for his story “What Cannot Be Done Alone.”

Marsha Massiah, Founder and Executive Director of BCLF, highlighted Dominica’s performance during the award ceremony.

“Dominica has been the silent dark horse in this race from day one,” Massiah said. “I don’t know what is taking place in Dominica, whatever writing incentives is happening in that little ecosystem there, but it’s absolutely spectacular, and we can’t get enough of it.”

Royer, who is based in Martinique, is a Dominican writer and documentary producer whose creative work is rooted in the Caribbean. Her fiction has twice appeared on the longlist for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, with “Alé-Viré” in 2024 and “Witness” in 2026.

The Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival is a literary festival based in Brooklyn, New York, focused exclusively on Caribbean literature and indigenous storytelling. Its Short Fiction Story Contest began in 2019 as the Emergent Writers Contest, with a second regional prize introduced in 2020 following increased interest from writers living in the Caribbean.

The BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean is the regional counterpart to the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean-American Writer’s Prize. Together, the awards recognize writers living and working in the Caribbean and writers in the diaspora.

The regional award is open to writers who were born, raised or hold nationality in the Caribbean and who live and work in the region. Entries are original short fiction of up to 3,000 words and are assessed anonymously by a panel of established Caribbean authors.

Both prizes are presented in memory of Dr. Elizabeth Nunez, the Trinidadian-American novelist and Distinguished Professor of English at Hunter College, CUNY, whose career included championing Caribbean and African-American writers.

This year’s judging panel included authors Kevin Jared Hosein and Carol Mitchell.

“I was impressed with the qualities of the entries we received,” Mitchell said at the award ceremony.

According to the BCLF press release, Royer was unable to travel to Brooklyn for the ceremony and accepted the award by video. She also read an excerpt from “River Mouth.”

The release said that in her remarks, she explained that the story was inspired by her childhood in Dominica, where she listened to elders tell stories on a neighbour’s front steps during full moon nights.

Among the stories she recalled were tales of a great-grandfather who once faced down a lajabless, a neighbour who nearly outwitted a soukouyan, and another person who kept a Moose—a little man said to be hatched from an egg and fed only on green bananas.

Royer thanked her mother “for gifting me a special love for telling stories,” as well as her sister, who inspired the character Val in the story. She also acknowledged her beta reader Mel, along with Ms. Celeste Mohammed and fellow writers from the Bocas-Jacarandas Short Story Intensive.

She closed her remarks in Kwéyòl: “Mèsi an pil, mèsi an chay” – thank you very much, thank you so much.

As the 2026 winner of the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean, Royer receives a US$1,750 cash prize, a BCLF trophy and branded merchandise, a collection of books from Akashic Books and a gift from Moleskine.

She will also be featured in an episode of the BCLF Cocoapod and receive an author interview and profile on the BCLF website. Her work will additionally be published in MOKO Magazine, PREE and Carib News.

Royer holds an Associate’s degree in Modern French Literature and a PhD in Bilingual Education from the Université des Antilles. As a documentary producer, she has also been recognized as an IF/Then alumna, a HotDocs Cross Currents fellow, a Caribbean Film Academy fellow, a Brown Girls Doc Mafia Black Director’s Fellow, and a European Film Market Toolbox alumna, as per the release.

“River Mouth” represents her first recognition from the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival and has now earned her the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean.

The two BCLF short fiction prizes form part of the festival’s wider mission to help bridge the gap between resources and opportunities in the literary industry and the historically under-recognized voices of Caribbean writers, whether they are writing from the islands or the diaspora.

Zephirine Royer