Bermudian author Liz Jones said she was in “total shock” when she found out she was one of three finalists for a Caribbean young adult literature award.

Ms Jones added: “It was a lovely surprise.”

She was speaking after she made the shortlist for the fifth annual Burt Award.

The award is offered through the Canadian Organisation for Development through Education.

Code selected the finalists from more than 30 submissions.

Ms Jones’s book A Dark Iris was picked alongside Barbadian author Shakirah Bourne’s My Fishy Stepmom and The Dark of the Sea, by Imam Baksh of Guyana.

The winner will be announced on April 25 at the Bocas Literary Festival in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

The jury called the book “sophisticated speculative fiction” with a “real and relatable” protagonist.

Ms Jones said: “It’s written from the point of view of a Bermudian girl who has just gone to high school. She’s also a brilliant artist.

“She has troubles of her own that are typical of high school, and her parents are separating.”

The book’s backdrop is the social unrest and racial division of the 1970s.

Key events include the murder of police commissioner George Duckett in 1972 and the murders of Sir Richard Sharples, the Governor, and his aide-de-camp Captain Hugh Sayers in the grounds of Government House in 1973.

The girl explores history through her artistic gift, including time travelling to the 18th century when the enslaved Sally Bassett was burnt at the stake for an alleged attempt to poison a slave-owner.

Ms Jones thanked Kim Dismont Robinson and the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs for setting up a writing group for young adult literature.

She said: “We stuck together as a writing group and we’re still meeting. I don’t know what I would do without that group.”

Ms Jones also thanked the Berkeley Institute, where she worked in the early 1970s, and artist Sharon Wilson for her thought-provoking classes.

She added: “I’d also like to thank Tina Stevenson for letting me write so much about Bermuda for The Bermudian magazine.”