The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is an annual award for unpublished short fiction administered and funded by the Commonwealth Foundation.
The short story prize covers the Commonwealth regions of
- Africa
- Asia,
- Canada and Europe
- Caribbean and
- Pacific
Who can apply?
- Entrants must be citizens of a Commonwealth country – please see Section 5 for the list of Commonwealth countries – or stateless persons currently residing in a Commonwealth country.
- The Commonwealth Foundation will request verification of citizenship status before winners are selected. Entries from citizens of non-Commonwealth countries are not eligible.
- For regional purposes, entries will be judged by country of citizenship. Where the writer has dual citizenship (of two Commonwealth countries), the entry will be judged in the region where the writer is permanently resident.
- There is no requirement for the writer to have current residence in a Commonwealth country, providing that they are a citizen of a Commonwealth country.
- Entrants must be aged 18 years or over on 1 November 2022.
- All entries will be accepted at the discretion of the Commonwealth Foundation which will exercise its judgement, in consultation with the prize chair, in ruling on questions of eligibility. The ruling of the chair on questions of eligibility is final, and no further correspondence will be entered into.
- Entries from previous overall winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize are not eligible.
- Entries from previous regional winners are eligible.
- Entries from current members of staff at the Commonwealth Foundation are not eligible.
- Entries must be unpublished and remain unpublished in any language until 1 May 2023.
What do you get?
Regional winners each receive £2,500 and the opportunity to be published online by Granta magazine, and the overall winner receives £5,000.
View the panel of judges for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize here.
Important Rules to note
- Entries, including those in translation, must be made by the original author.
- Entries will only be accepted via the online entry form.
- The deadline for receipt of entries is 1 November 2022 (11.59pm in any time zone).
- Only one entry per writer each year may be submitted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
- The story must be the entrant’s own work
- The story must be original work and should not have been published anywhere, in full or in part, in any language, before 1 May 2023. Published work is taken to mean published in any printed, publicly accessible form, e.g. anthology, magazine, newspaper. It is also taken to mean published online, except for personal blogs, personal websites and personal Facebook pages.
- Entries previously submitted to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize are not eligible.
- Entries must be 2,000 words minimum, 5,000 words maximum (not including title).
Exemptions to the rule
Entries should be submitted in English, with the following exceptions:
- Entries from Commonwealth citizens who write in Bengali, Chinese, Creole, French, Greek, Kiswahili, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan, Tamil and Turkish and who do not have an English translation of their story, may submit their stories in the original language.
- English translations of short stories written in other languages are eligible if submitted by the writer (not the translator) and provided that the translator is also a citizen of a Commonwealth country.
- Simultaneous submissions are eligible as long as the entrant informs the organisers (via writers@commonwealth.int) immediately should the story be accepted for publication elsewhere or be selected for a prize.
See more details on the rules here
Apply Here