
Alexia Tolas
With their story: 'Granma's Porch'
Alexia Tolas was born and raised in The Bahamas. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English from the former College of the Bahamas in 2015 and has been slowly, but surely, building a collection of short stories since. Her writing explores the intricacies of small-island life, heavily drawing upon local mythologies and folktales in order to convey realities silenced by tradition and trauma. Her writing has been featured in literary journals including Womanspeak, Granta, and Adda.
In 2019, she won the Commonwealth Short Story Regional Award for the Caribbean. In the dormant periods between writing spells, Alexia consumes
science-fiction and fantasy novels, studies perpetually for the GRE, plays too many video games, and debates with her family and students on anything from
ecocriticism in Madam Bovary and Things Fall Apart to the management of free
will in Castlevania.