Bergstrom Studio awards £6k grant to Mireles Hinds for ‘compelling’ novel Sucre

Bergstrom Studio has awarded a £6,000 grant to Marissa Mireles Hinds who is working on her novel Sucre.  

The Bergstrom Studio Grant was launched earlier this year to help support an underrepresented writer in the UK who is working on their début. It is for an unagented, unpublished author so that they might get the support they need to finish writing their first book. It is described as “no-strings-attached financial support”, as the money might be used to cover time to write, childcare, a physical space to write, or to subsidise income or rent. 

Sucre is described as “a blend of magic realism and historical fiction”. The book will explore themes of anti-colonialism, black history, fear of motherhood, Caribbean and African spiritualism, family and identity. 

It is a multi-generational saga about the family of Ahan Vita, a 14-year-old girl haunted by secrets, magic and a generational curse. During the end of the 18th century, in a small village called Sarakoum, Ahan lives hidden from a coven of witches known as ‘The Othermen’ – colonists and the Portuguese papacy – by her grandmother’s magic and for more than 15 years no one can find it except those who already know where to look. 

Mireles Hinds is a London-based Afro-Latinx and Caribbean-American poet, filmmaker and writer. She founded the film and music collective Creative Until Death and co-founded Babes in Development – a safe ideation and growth incubator for Black women and non-binary writers, filmmakers and creatives that holds sessions at the Barbican Centre. Her writing has previously been shortlisted for the RSL Sky Arts Award. 

She said: “I want to thank everyone who contributed to the grant, the studio and Abigail and Megan for their consideration and for believing in me and the project. I have been working on Sucre over the course of the past 10 years; fitting it between my work and my personal life. This grant will allow me to continue my investigations into important historical elements of the slave trade, Caribbean slave narratives and the Haitian Revolution on which the historical nature of the book is based, as well as my research into physics, religion and fables and spirituality. With this grant I will be able to focus the first half of next year solely on finishing my novel and travelling to important sites in the Caribbean, which will make a great impact on the work.” 

Abigail Bergstrom, founder of Bergstrom Studio, said: “We had hundreds of applications and the standard of submissions was incredibly high. I’m thrilled to be awarding this grant to Marissa. Her writing is so compelling and I very much hope that one day we will be able to hold a published copy of Sucre in our hands. I also want to thank those who helped fund this grant – without them it would never have been possible.” 

The Bergstrom Studio Grant is funded by Bergstrom Studio, Brazen, Midas, MØRNING, Emma Gannon, Gina Martin, Katherine Ormerod, Laura Bates and Sophia Thakur.