2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize  is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2,000–5,000 words) in English. Regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives £5,000. Translated entries are also eligible, as are stories written in the original Bengali, Chinese, Kiswahili, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan and Tamil.



Eligibility
a. Entrants must be citizens of a Commonwealth country
b. Entrants must be aged 18 years or over on 1 November 2018.
The online form will be available from the opening date, 1 September 2018.
Submission of an entry is taken as acceptance of the entry rules.
For any entry or eligibility queries not covered below, please email writers@commonwealth.int for
clarification before submitting an entry.

About the Prize

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is an annual award for unpublished short fiction

administered and funded by the Commonwealth Foundation.

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is part of Commonwealth Writers, the cultural initiative

of the Commonwealth Foundation.

The prize covers the Commonwealth regions of 1. Africa, 2. Asia, 3. Canada and Europe, 4.

Caribbean and 5. Pacific. (See Section 4 for countries in each region).

The international judging panel comprises one judge from each of the five regions

Rules

• The story must be original and should not have been published anywhere in full or in part before 1 May 2018. 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, with the exception of personal blogs and personal websites.
• Entries should be submitted in English, with the following exceptions: writers from Mozambique who write in Portuguese, and writers who write in Bengali, Chinese, Kiswahili, Malay, Samoan, Tamil and who do not have an English translation of their story, may submit their stories in the original language. Translations of short stories written in other languages are eligible if submitted by the writer (not the translator) and provided the translator is also  citizen of a Commonwealth country.
• Entries must be 2,000 words minimum, 5,000 words maximum.

For complete guidelines click here