A haunting and brilliantly crafted dystopia, “Tourism Is Our Business” turns the postcard-perfect paradise of Barbados into a chilling stage where survival depends on servitude, and technology offers a new mode of brutal control over formerly colonised subjects.
Chapbook · Fiction
Tourism Is Our Business
by Heather Barker
$50.00 TTD
“A haunting and brilliantly crafted dystopia, “Tourism Is Our Business” turns the postcard-perfect paradise of Barbados into a chilling stage where survival depends on servitude, and technology offers a new mode of brutal control over formerly colonised subjects. A necessary, unflinching look at the cost of paradise when it’s built for others.”
Available from Paper Based Bookshop, Port of Spain.
About the book
Tourism Is Our Business by Barbadian author Heather Barker is a short story drawn from a larger book in progress. Selected as a 2024/25 Bocas Breakthrough Fellow, Barker worked on her manucript during her fellowship term, which included mentoring by novelist Maisy Card.
The Bocas Breakthrough Fellowships were awarded in 2024 to five early-career Caribbean writers, to support them in advancing or completing a debut book of fiction or poetry.
The Bocas Breakthrough Fellowships were funded by Creative Caribbean, a joint project implemented by UNESCO, the CARICOM Secretariat, and The University of the West Indies (UWI), with funding from the European Union and the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, under the ACP-EU 11th EDF Culture Programme.
Meet the author
Heather Barker
Heather Barker writes fiction about girls and women in and from Barbados, while exploring the legacies of the Transatlantic slave trade. She grew up in the UK and lives in Barbados, where she runs the boutique PR firm Clearly Content Communications Inc., while staring through her window at a sliver of the Caribbean Sea. Barker was longlisted for the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize from over seven thousand entries. She was also shortlisted for the 2022 Bocas Emerging Writers Fellowship, the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and the 2016 Small Axe Literary Competition. Her fiction has appeared in Pree, Doek!, adda stories, and more.
