Commonwealth Writers, a cultural initiative of Commonwealth Foundation, is now accepting submission for the 2020’s edition of Short Story Prize. The best piece of unpublished short fiction (2,000–5,000 words) in English will receive the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives £5,000. Participants may submit translated entries. Further, stories written in Bengali, Chinese, French, Greek, Kiswahili, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan, Tamil and Turkish are also eligible for the short story competition. If the winning story is in translation, the translator receives additional prize money. Moreover, the competition is free to enter.

Commonwealth Short Story Prize

The judging panel will select the winners from five Commonwealth regions of Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, Caribbean, and Pacific. The international judging panel comprises one judge from each of the five regions. Moreover, there will be five winners, one from each region. Further, one regional winner will be selected as the overall winner. The overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize will receive £5,000 while the remaining four regional winners will receive £2,500. If the winning short story is a translation into English, the translator will receive additional prize money.

Eligibility for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Candidates are eligible to participate in the Commonwealth Short Story Competition if they meet the following standards:

• Entrants must be citizens of a Commonwealth country. Moreover, the Foundation will request verification of citizenship status before selecting the winners. However, citizens besides commonwealth countries are ineligible to participate.
• Moreover, 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.
• Further, the participants must be of age 18 years or over on 1 November 2019.
• Entries from previous regional winners are eligible. However, entries from previous overall winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize are not eligible.
• Moreover, current members of staff at the Commonwealth Foundation are not eligible to submit for the short story competition.
• Also, the entries must be unpublished and remain unpublished in any language until 1 May 2020.

How to participate in the Commonwealth Short Story competition?

Participants may submit their short stories in a PDF document. Participants, further, should note that the PDF document should use the title of the story as the file name. However, if it is not possible to save the entry as a PDF document, the participants may submit a Microsoft Word document. Moreover, the first page should include the name of the story and the number of words. Authors should submit a short biography on the entry form.

Deadline

The participants of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize must the online entry form by 1 November 2019 (11.59pm in any time zone). No entries will be considered if submitted after this date.