Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2019 - Commonwealth Foundation

The 2019 prize winner

Constantia Soteriou

Death Customs

Constantia Soteriou, from Cyprus, was announced as the overall winner of the world’s most global literary prize. ‘Death Customs’ was translated from Greek into English by Lina Protopapa, a translator and cultural critic based in Cyprus.

Constantia Soteriou was born in Nicosia in 1975. Her first novel Aishe Goes on Vacation (Patakis, 2015) received the Athens Prize for Literature award. Her second book Voices Made of Soil (Patakis, 2017) was included on the shortlist for the Cyprus Literature Awards. She has written plays for independent stages and for the Cyprus Theatre Organization.

Lina Protopapa, who translated this year’s overall winning story from Greek into English, lives in Nicosia, Cyprus, where she works as a translator and cultural critic

‘Death Customs’ is a story about the women of Cyprus; mothers or wives who were left to believe that their beloved persons were missing after the 1974 war, while the state had clear evidence about their death. It is a story of death customs, memories, bitterness and justice.

You can read Constantia’s prizewinning story on Granta.

‘I feel honoured and happy to win this amazing prize; it feels like a reward for all the hard work I have been doing over the last eight years, writing about the perspectives of women on the political and historical events of Cyprus. This prize is a recognition for giving voice to those who did not have the chance to be heard before; those who were left behind to pick up the mess of the war. I grew up seeing the faces of the mothers and the wives of the missing people; those were the real victims of the war. Women should not be victims of any war. Women are the continuation of life. I wrote this story to salute their strength.’

Constantia Soteriou

‘ “Death Customs” is a remarkable short story that manages to be both personal – following, as it does, the painful narrative of a woman who has lost her son – and deeply political, in that it charts the division of a land as it topples into civil war. We are encouraged to view the descent into bloodshed and mayhem as a domestic squabble between two brothers who can only be reconciled in death. The voices employed are beautifully resonant, and the story shifts gears, and ranges across time, with eloquence. ‘Death Customs’ is poetically intense and complex in form and subject-matter, yet the story remains admirably lucid and moving, and deservedly wins the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.’

Caryl Phillips, Chair of Judges

Regional winners

2019’s international judging panel selected five regional winners from 5,081 entries, and a shortlist of 21 stories, for the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.

Caryl Phillips, Chair of the Judges, said: ‘The regional winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize explore a remarkably diverse range of subject-matter, including stories about war, love, abuse and neglect. What unites the stories is a common thread of narrative excellence and dramatic intensity. The voices of a truly global cast of characters enable us to engage with, and recognise, universal emotions of pain and loss.’

Luke Neima, Granta’s Digital Director and Online Editor, said: ‘This year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize winning stories showcase the short story in a range of guises, innovations of form that stretch but never exhaust the potential of the short story to address the regional and universal questions this gifted crop of authors seeks to address. These outstanding stories capture the breadth of talent writing today across the Commonwealth.’

Canada & Europe

Death Customs

Constantia Soteriou

Cyprus

This is a story about the women of Cyprus, mothers or wives who were left to believe that their beloved persons were missing after the 1974 war, while the state had clear evidence about their death. It is a story of death customs, memories, bitterness and justice.

Read their story on Granta (external)

”Death Customs’ is a remarkable short story that manages to be both personal – following, as it does, the painful narrative of a woman who has lost her son – and deeply political, in that it charts the division of a land as it topples into civil war. We are encouraged to view the descent into bloodshed and mayhem as a domestic squabble between two brothers who can only be reconciled in death. The voices employed are beautifully resonant, and the story shifts gears, and ranges across time, with eloquence. ‘Death Customs’ is poetically intense and complex in form and subject-matter, yet the story remains admirably lucid and moving, and deservedly wins the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.’

Caryl Phillips, Chair of Judges

Constantia Soteriou was born in Nicosia in 1975. Her first novel ‘Aishe Goes on Vacation’ (Patakis, 2015) received the Athens Prize for Literature award. Her second book ‘Voices Made of Soil’ (Patakis, 2017) was included on the shortlist for the Cyprus Literature Awards. She has written plays for independent stages and for the Cyprus Theatre Organization.

Constantia was announced as the overall winner of the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her story ‘Death Customs’ in July 2019. Constantia’s story was the first translated entry to win the Prize, and was translated from Greek into English by Lina Protopapa. The award was presented by author and member of this year’s judging panel Karen Lord and writer Erika Soucy at the at the Maison de la literature, Quebec City, Canada.

- Constantia Soteriou

Listen to the author talk about their submission

Caribbean

Granma’s Porch

Alexia Tolas

Bahamas

Abandoned by her father on her grandmother’s porch, Helena fumbles along the delicate border between adolescence and adulthood, guided by the past traumas of her friends and family and her troubled first love.

Read their story on Granta (external)

Alexia Tolas is a Bahamian writer whose stories explore small-island life and local mythology to convey realities, silenced by tradition and trauma. Her writing has been featured in Womanspeak, Granta, Windrush, adda, and The Caribbean Writer. She was shortlisted for the 2020 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. She is working on her first novel.

‘Winning the regional prize for the Caribbean means everything to me. It means that I made the right choice. After my first semester in college, I had to make a difficult choice between doing what was expected of me and what I wanted. It seemed to be a selfish decision. I come from a struggling family and a struggling island, so as a girl with potential, I was expected to prepare myself for a lucrative career in the traditional professions: law, medicine, architecture. However, I chose to write. I got a lot of criticism for that choice. Many people asked me what I could do with a Literature degree: write children’s books; teach? I could, and there is nothing wrong with either. I make my living using my degree, and I am happy, but I still felt as if the true purpose behind my decision had not been realized. It has now.’

- Alexia Tolas

Africa

Madam's Sister

Mbozi Haimbe

Zambia

The arrival of madam’s sister from London causes upheaval within the household, but has an unexpected bonus for the guard, Cephas.

Read their story on Granta (external)

Mbozi Haimbe was born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia. She completed an MSt in Creative Writing at the University of Cambridge in 2018, and is currently working on a collection of African inspired short stories. Mbozi lives in Norfolk with her family.

‘I am absolutely thrilled to have been selected as the regional winner, and feel privileged to contribute to Africa’s literary landscape. Although a social worker by profession, I have always considered myself a writer. Winning the regional prize validates my aspiration. I thank the judges, and give acknowledgement to Zambia, which remains deeply influential to my writing.’

- Mbozi Haimbe

Asia

My Mother Pattu

Saraswathy M. Manickam

Malaysia

‘My Mother Pattu’ explores a mother’s violent jealousy and envy towards her daughter who finds no one can protect her from the abuse except herself.

Read their story on Granta (external)

Saraswathy Manickam is a freelance writer, language and Creative Writing teacher whose short stories have been published in Malaysian anthologies.

She won the DK Dutt Memorial Award for Literary Excellence in 2017. She hopes to bring out a collection of short stories by the end of the year.

‘I’m delighted, honoured and at the same time, petrified as darn it – the bar for my stories has now been raised higher among friends, teachers and the few readers. It is also very humbling that this story with its different voices set in a time long ago in Malaysia has found relevance and connectivity.’

- Saraswathy M. Manickam

Pacific

Screaming

Harley Hern

New Zealand

A visit to a New Zealand rest home and a kapa haka performance force two friends to confront deceit, identity and endings.

Read their story on Granta (external)

Harley Hern is a writer, artist and editor whose fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in various anthologies and journals. She has a Master of Creative Writing (Auckland University), is administrator for the Academy of NZ Literature (Te Whare Mātātui Aotearoa), senior editor of Geometry journal and for two years was administrator for NZ National Poetry Day. She lives on a rural block where she chainsaws firewood, fixes fences, paints bright art and trains horses.

‘Winning the regional prize is a truly unexpected honour, both humbling and empowering. My small country has a giant short fiction tradition, and an increasingly diverse collection of voices. I’m thrilled the judges feel my own is good enough to add to our narrative and to that of the greater Commonwealth community. But I am also astounded. This was the only short story I wrote last year. I can’t stop screaming. Thank you, thank you Commonwealth Writers!’

- Harley Hern

The Shortlist

'Bluey' , Maria Samuela

New Zealand

'Death Customs' , Constantia Soteriou

Cyprus

'Deserted' , Erato Ioannou

Cyprus

'Extinction' , Alex Latimer

South Africa

'Granma’s Porch' , Alexia Tolas

Bahamas

'How to Marry an African President' , Erica Sugo Anyadike

Tanzania

'Love-life' , Nuzha Nuseibeh

United Kingdom

'Madam's Sister' , Mbozi Haimbe

Zambia

'Miss Coelho, English Teacher' , Kiran Doshi

India

'My Mother Pattu' , Saraswathy M. Manickam

Malaysia

'Nightfall' , Emma Ashmere

Australia

'Oats' , Rawiya Hosein

Trinidad and Tobago

'Pengap' , Lokman Hakim

Malaysia

'Resurrection' , Hilary Dean

Canada

'Screaming' , Harley Hern

New Zealand

'The Blessing of Kali' , Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu

Kenya

'The Bride' , Adorah Nworah

Nigeria

'The Night of Hungry Ghosts' , Sarah Evans

United Kingdom

'The Ol’ Higue on Market Street' , Kevin Garbaran

Guyana

'A Hurricane & the Price of Fish' , Shakirah Bourne

Barbados

'Amid the Winds and Snow' , Tyler Keevil

Canada

Bluey

Maria Samuela

New Zealand

When Rosie meets her dad’s mate Bluey, she’s swept up in a journey that exposes some past truths. Bluey makes sense of the adult world through the innocence of a child’s eye and their ever-inquiring mind.

‘My cousin told me that house is a tinny house. That’s a stupid name for a house made of wood, I said. And she said I was stupid and now we ain’t cousins no more. I reckon she meant roof—tinny roof—cos that’s the only tin on that wooden house that I can see.
“Lock the doors, bub. Keep them locked, remember. Don’t open the doors for no one, k? Stranger danger, don’t forget.”
Dad wouldn’t leave me alone until I locked the doors so I leaned over and pushed down the button on his side of the car. All the locks went click at once and then I watched Dad walk up the drive towards the tinny roof.’

Maria Samuela writes for children and adults. She’s been published in the School Journal and had stories translated into five Pacific languages. Her stories are broadcast on National Radio and her adult stories have appeared in Turbine, Sport, and Takahē. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University and was the 2018 University Bookshop / Robert Lord Cottage summer writer in residence. Maria is of Cook Islands descent and lives in Wellington, New Zealand. She is completing her first collection of stories for adults.

Death Customs

Constantia Soteriou

Cyprus

‘I met Spasoula in one of the gatherings, one of those occasions. September. When we gathered at the railings and held photographs to the prisoners coming from Adana. For them to look at and tell us whether they had seen our loved ones. Whether they recognised them. Lies. It was at no gathering. It was at the photo studio.’

Listen to the author talk about their submission

Deserted

Erato Ioannou

Cyprus

When war strikes, eighty-year-old Anna stays in her deserted town to defend her home. Soon, she will be possessed by superhuman youth and being alive takes a whole new meaning.

‘Even though there was no official call for evacuation, Varosi was draining. Dusty saloons with pyramids, made of suitcases and bundles, fastened on their roofs, jammed the city’s roads. Sweaty armpits, hands, heads, and elbows hang from their windows. Fitful honking pierced the hot air—thick with hasty breathing and whispers. They all drove off reassuring themselves they’d be back soon. Door keys were slipped under flower pots, back doors were left cracked open, lights on the front verandas were forgotten switched on.’

Erato Ioannou studied English Literature at the University of Cyprus and has an MFA in Creative Writing from UNC Wilmington. She is the associate editor of In Focus literary journal. Her writing has been published in anthologies and journals in Cyprus, Greece, Romania, and the UK and she is the author of Cats Have it All, a collection of short stories. Most recently, her work has been featured in So Many Islands Anthology. Erato’s novel Muerta, after numerous drafts, is finally complete.

Extinction

Alex Latimer

South Africa

Soon after his mother’s death, a boy meets and befriends Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, discoverer of the coelacanth. Bonded by a shared surname, they help each other to come to terms with love and loss.

‘The phone rang – a wooden mallard with eyes that pulsed red with each ring. I watched it for a long time before I picked it up.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello.”
It was a woman, her voice accented and thin. “I’m looking for Marjorie,” she said.
The duck was hot against my ear.
“She’s dead,” I said.’

Alex Latimer is a writer and illustrator. His picture books for children have been published and translated around the world. He has written one novel, The Space Race, and has co-written two others, South and North – both with Diane Awerbuck under the pen name Frank Owen. Alex is currently working on Megafauna, a collection of short stories.

Granma’s Porch

Alexia Tolas

Bahamas

‘I feel safe out here on the porch. Granpa did love the sea so much, he build the porch right over the sound. This porch done seen me grow. When I was little, Granma did plait ribbons into my curls here every morning. Mummy would sneak up behind me and tickle me till I pee, then toss me into the sound to bathe. Me and Sade done skin enough knee tripping on the splintered wood. Everyone feel at home on Granma porch. Rico and Glenn just bout raise on it. I done seen every inch of they scrawny selves, more than I ever wan’ see.’

How to Marry an African President

Erica Sugo Anyadike

Tanzania

How To Marry an African President is a story about an ambitious First Lady who is vilified by society, when she attempts to take over the reigns of power from her ageing husband, after he murders her lover.

‘The truth is, when you meet, he will be neatly dressed. Shirt collar starched just so, shoes like shiny copper coins, fingernails trimmed and clean, hair clipped and precise as his speech. He will start by hanging around you a little too long. Your conversations will peter out and he will end them reluctantly. The other secretaries will stare. You’ll pretend not to notice. Play it cool and coy. He will ask you out. Appear taken aback, smooth your skirt and shift your weight onto your other foot. He will look paternal and concerned. Explain that you are married, and he is too.’

Erica Sugo Anyadike works in television. She also writes short stories and has been published by Kwani, Writivism, Femrite and Karavan. She has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize. Whether she is writing for television or writing prose, Erica’s stories place African women at the centre of her narratives. She is particularly interested in complex representations of African women – rejecting simplistic portrayals of them in binary terms. She is currently writing a novel.

Love-life

Nuzha Nuseibeh

United Kingdom

A half-love story for the millennial generation.

‘How’s your love-life? my father asks. He is drunk. We are in a Chinese restaurant in London, and my brother and his wife are too sleep-deprived and hungover to be partaking in the bottle of wine that they ordered. So my father has finished it off too quickly and is now asking me this question as I laugh too loudly and look at the menu. How do you think her love-life is? he asks my brother, who takes pity on me, for once, and changes the subject.’

Nuzha Nuseibeh is a Palestinian-English doctoral student at Oxford University, researching the sociology of education. Her interests include issues around identity, inequality, queerness, and learning. When she’s not writing, she can usually be found reading Ben Lerner or binging on Jane the Virgin.

Madam's Sister

Mbozi Haimbe

Zambia

The arrival of madam’s sister from London causes upheaval within the household, but has an unexpected bonus for the guard, Cephas.

‘The sister has a headful of fine hair down to the small of her back. The golden colour of maize silk, her weave is not stiff and waxy like Chipo’s, but moves in the breeze.’

Miss Coelho, English Teacher

Kiran Doshi

India

A story of an indomitable teacher running into unexpected difficulties after retirement—and overcoming them her way.

‘A few days after Miss Coelho received the Best Teacher award, the following letter appeared in the Times of India, Mumbai.

Dear editor,
Better late than never, I suppose. But the government could have given Miss Coelho the award twenty, thirty or even forty years ago, in fact the day she became a teacher and joined St Patrick’s School for Girls. For even then she knew better English than anybody else – and knew how to teach it, whether to a class of forty or to a single lost child like me. She mesmerised us with her talk, her walk, her stories, her sudden questions, her praise . . .’

Kiran Doshi is a retired Indian diplomat and educationist. His last novel, ‘Jinnah often came to our House’, received The Hindu prize for the best work of fiction published in India, 2016. His earlier published works include a satirical novel set in the world of India-Pakistan-USA relations, and a collection of diplomatic tales written in comic verse. He lives in New Delhi.

My Mother Pattu

Saraswathy M. Manickam

Malaysia

‘My Mother Pattu’ explores a mother’s violent jealousy and envy towards her daughter who finds no one can protect her from the abuse except herself.

‘My mother Pattu, graced our lives largely with her absence; for which my father and I, and to a lesser extent, grandma, were profoundly grateful. She descended upon us once a month to collect her allowance from grandma, loot the pantry, curse my father, and cuff me on the ear. It was a collective sigh of relief we breathed, when she went away except for grandma who wept in secret for the daughter she could not live with.’

Saraswathy Manickam is a freelance writer, language and Creative Writing teacher whose short stories have been published in Malaysian anthologies.

She won the DK Dutt Memorial Award for Literary Excellence in 2017. She hopes to bring out a collection of short stories by the end of the year.

Nightfall

Emma Ashmere

Australia

An abandoned Irish immigrant living in the Adelaide Women’s Destitute Asylum refuses to answer questions about the disappearance of a music hall dancer.

‘Irish Iris is what they call me here. They say I have eyes everywhere. That’s why Miss Upfield is here. She thinks I’ve seen Octavia.
I’m looking at Miss Upfield dressed in her widow’s weeds, black feathers, black lace, black hat, crepe scratching at her neck. I stare at the curled paper face of Octavia staring up from Miss Upfield’s glove. It’s a fair likeness. Perhaps Miss Upfield really is Octavia’s sister. Her face is shaped the same. The shape of a heart. Miss Upfield smiles. She’s kept all her teeth except for that gold one at the front.’

Emma Ashmere was born in South Australia. She has a PhD from La Trobe University Melbourne on the use of marginalised history in fiction. Her novel The Floating Garden was shortlisted for the 2016 Small Press Network MUBA award. Her short story collection Dreams They Forgot will be published in 2020 by Wakefield Press.

Oats

Rawiya Hosein

Trinidad and Tobago

Fearing for his life, Forceripe Frederick obeys the blind obeah man after breaking his window. His request: read to him. This is a story about an old man who keeps oats in his pocket and a troubled teen who learns why.

‘People is always tell me I mad because I does keep oats in my shirt pocket, but I is tell them to mind they own business because they don’t know the things I know and they never see the things I see.
Look. I know I’s only nineteen so I don’t have no plenty plenty life experience to talk bout, I ent know much and I ent see much, but is take a man nine months to born and a second to die. What I saying is thing is happen and is happen fast and when that change come it does come and you can’t go back.’

Rawiya Hosein is a Trinidadian author currently residing in Canada. She holds a BA in Literatures in English with Linguistics from the University of the West Indies and is awaiting examination of her MFA Creative Writing thesis.

Rawiya is the winner of the John Steinbeck Award for Fiction (2021) and the Bocas Lit Fest Youth Writer of the Year Award (2022). She has been shortlisted twice for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2019, 2021) and longlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize (2021) as well as the Royal Society of Literature’s V.S. Pritchett Prize (2021). She was a finalist for the BCLF Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean (2020). Rawiya’s fiction has appeared in Adda and Reed Magazine.

Pengap

Lokman Hakim

Malaysia

The story reflects the definition of ‘stuffy’ (pengap) from the characters’ views who refuse to migrate to a stuffy city before the definition overwhelms the whole structure of the story.

‘The stall was so desolate, I had to make my own coffee. Fortunately, they had net crepes and chicken curry, served by an older lady with the head of rabbit, who asked everyone to call her Big Sister Tina. Whenever she saw me at the stall, she would sit next to me and tell stories about the shop owner who had been cloistered in his room for so long. ‘Stuffy as my room is, the city out there is stuffier.”

Lokman Hakim is an author of several books, comprising of novels, collections of short stories and poetry, with genres spanning from science fiction, thriller, young adult and fantasy written in the Malay language. His short stories have been published in local newspapers, literary websites and national literary magazines. He works as an infrastructure engineer for a construction company.

Pengap is translated from Malay into English by Adriana Nordin Manan; a writer, playwright, translator, and researcher. Born, raised and based in Kuala Lumpur, she is passionate about storytelling and the expanse of stories as bridges across cultures, imaginations and human desires. Trilingual in Malay, English and Spanish, Adriana has a Masters in Politics from New York University. She is also a graduate of Colby College and the United World Colleges (UWC) movement.

Resurrection

Hilary Dean

Canada

The eighth-graders at St. Joseph’s School are putting on a Passion Play. But can they trust the class clown with the role of Jesus?

‘When we met Gianni Amodeo in Miss Thompson’s class, he had failed grade eight twice already and didn’t even care.
‘Rocky Balboa flunked school too,’ he said. ‘I’m just like him. An Italian stallion.’
He was fifteen. We turned thirteen one at a time that year and he remained a head taller than the tallest boy. He had real muscles and he shaved. When we learned about The Voyage of Puberty in Health class, he looked like the drawing on the pamphlet’s last page.’

Hilary Dean was the winner of CBC’s Canada Writes award in 2012, and has won EVENT Magazine’s non-fiction contest twice. Her work has received the 2016 Lascaux Prize in Fiction, appeared in This Magazine, Matrix, and The HG Wells Anthology, and shortlisted for the Journey Prize. Dean’s recent film, ‘So You’re Going Crazy’…aired on CBC television’s Documentary Channel for ten years and is currently utilized in healthcare curricula worldwide.

www.hilarydean.ca

Screaming

Harley Hern

New Zealand

A visit to a New Zealand rest home and a kapa haka performance force two friends to confront deceit, identity and endings.

‘Mere huffs air from her nose. She is terrible at waiting. Nowadays though, she doesn’t twitch her legs and roll her eyes. Her feet are rooted on the carpet, flat-shoed and sensible. I can’t get used to how still she can be. I was always the cautious pukeko, gawky and slow. Mere was the little piwakawaka – the fantail – restless and bold. Now only Mere’s fingers quiver, a slight flutter, a residual urge for flight. What was daintiness has turned to fragility. What was beauty has melted and painted her bones with blotted, wax papered skin. She still has her teeth; mine were moulded last year by a young technician with halitosis.’

The Blessing of Kali

Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu

Kenya

An unforeseen tragedy strikes a young family bringing with it a tumultuous upheaval of spirituality and faith. For the nonbeliever, death awakens the possibility that perhaps, God is real.

‘My granddaughter was born on a leap year, the year of confusion, mwaka mrefu.
She was born in a bathtub filled with warm water. I had never seen that even though at 65 I thought I had seen everything. I was told that the new way to give birth is in water. I was told that it’s soothing both for mother and child. I was told a quiet atmosphere is important. I was given a chair and asked to please stay in the corner and not speak, and I did as I was told.’

Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu was born in Nairobi in 1977. She holds a Masters in Journalism from Columbia University and has worked as a journalist in New York City, Washington DC and Boston. In 2017, Irene graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. She lives in Cape Town with her husband and three children. Lucky Girl is her first novel.

The Bride

Adorah Nworah

Nigeria

A Nigerian bride panics when a stranger poses as her groom. Her loved ones insist that the wedding must go on, and it does.

‘The man in the backseat of the powder blue Toyota RAV4 is not Dumeje Nwokeocha, the groom.

But you are the bride.

Your name is Somadina, Adina for short.

Sometimes, your name is baby, or Din Din, or the black girl, or the quiet girl, or her, or the chubby one, or bitch, depending on the mouth, or the mood.

Today, your name is the bride, but the man in the powder blue Toyota RAV4 is not the groom.’

Adorah Nworah is an Igbo storyteller from Anambra State in Eastern Nigeria. She earned her juris doctorate from Temple Law School in 2018, and currently practices commercial real estate finance law in Philadelphia. Her short story, ‘Broken English’, was long-listed for the 2018 Short Story Day Africa prize.

The Night of Hungry Ghosts

Sarah Evans

United Kingdom

It is the fifteenth day of the seventh month as Li Wei steps out onto the muddy sandflats of Morecambe Bay. Invisible amidst the happy chatter of those who belong here, surrounded by quicksand and at risk of swift-turning tides, Wei is tormented by ghosts from his past.

‘He is the last to leave the station. The afternoon has barely started and he proceeds at a leisurely pace, turning right along the narrow pavement, reaching a car park which sits on the corner where the river Kent spills out into the sea. The train, its two carriages, is just now reaching the far end of the viaduct and he stops and watches until it vanishes from view. He presses on, the walkway following the curve of the estuary and broadening into a seaside promenade. The arc of the bay opens out. The tide has receded, leaving behind glistening sands, the surface sculpted by the undulations of the waves. On the horizon, the grey sky presses down to meet the dull roll of the ocean.’

Sarah Evans has had many short stories published in anthologies, literary journals and online. Prizes have been awarded by, amongst others: Words and Women, Stratford Literary Festival and the Bridport Prize. Her work is also included in several Unthology volumes, Best New Writing and Shooter Magazine. She started her career as a theoretical physicist before moving into economics and policy advice. She and her husband live in Welwyn Garden City, UK.

The Ol’ Higue on Market Street

Kevin Garbaran

Guyana

Folktales and Jumbie stories take a dark turn after young Devika decides to investigate the rumours of an Ol’ Higue living in her village.

”Jumbie is not real’ is what nine year old Devika had come to believe after her teacher interjected the idea into a conversation she was having with two of her friends during lunch break. Ms. Beverly explained that those were only stories and folktales from a time long ago, meant to frighten lil children. Devika clung to this notion partially because she had never seen a Jumbie in real life. But mostly because the thought of any Jumbie being real terrified her. Her two friends Javid and Celina were not convinced.’

Kevin Garbaran grew up in the village of Zorg on the Essequibo Coast. He spent his high school years at President’s College, where he developed a love for literature. After college, he pursued a degree in Environmental Studies at the University of Guyana, while working part-time as a server. After graduating with his BSc in 2018, he chose to continue working part-time in order to dedicate most of his time to writing. This is the first time he has entered a short story competition of any kind.

A Hurricane & the Price of Fish

Shakirah Bourne

Barbados

The unlikely romance between a no-nonsense market vendor and a retired swindler has dire consequences on the price of fish during hurricane season.

‘Chattel Lane is a small, fishing community in the North of Barbados, but unlike its name, things in Chattel Lane seldom moved. If you left Chattel Lane in 1960 to go drive bus in London, and come back to visit your now middle-aged children and show off your polished British accent, you would find that on entering the village, the piece of wood with ‘Chattel Lane’ slashed on with white paint, was still hammered onto the telephone pole.’

Shakirah Bourne is an award-winning Barbadian writer and filmmaker. She is a recipient of the Governor General Award for Excellence in Literary Fiction for her short story collection In Time of Need, and a finalist for the 2018 Burt Award for Caribbean Literature. Her short stories have been featured in several journals including Adda, The Caribbean Writer, NIFCA Winning Words Anthology, POUI, and Journal of Caribbean Literatures.

Amid the Winds and Snow

Tyler Keevil

Canada

A story told through fragments of consciousness and memory, ‘Amid The Winds and Snow’ pieces together the puzzle of a tragic accident in one of the most beautiful and desolate places on Earth.

‘The throb seemed to spread through her. A tom-tom thrum. Signalling alarm. Signalling all was not well. All was not well. Moving, then. Trying to roll onto her side, free that arm. Thinking she had been attacked or had an accident. Ended up in a hospital bed, an operating theatre. Raising her torso with her good arm, favouring the other. Feeling brittle pain in the bone, crackling outwards. Peeling open her eyes. Catching glimpses of rock, an azure expanse. Space so vast and fathomless she could’ve been on a distant planet.’

Tyler Keevil grew up in Vancouver and in his mid-twenties moved to Wales. He is the author of several books and his short works have appeared in a range of magazines and anthologies, including The Missouri Review, PRISM: International, and Planet: The Welsh Internationalist. He is a past recipient of The Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize and the Writers’ Trust of Canada / McLelland & Stewart Journey Prize.

This year’s judging panel

Caryl Phillips

Chair

Caryl Phillips was born in Saint Kitts and brought up in England. He is the author of numerous books of non-fiction and fiction. Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN Open Book Award, and A Distant Shore won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize. His other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crossing the River, which was also short-listed for the Booker Prize. He has written for the stage, television, and film, and is a contributor to newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and holds honorary doctorates from a number of universities. He has taught at universities in Britain, Singapore, Ghana, Sweden and Barbados and is currently Professor of English at Yale University. His latest novel, A View of the Empire at Sunset was published in 2018.

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Judge

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, a Ugandan novelist and short story writer, has a PhD from Lancaster University. Her first novel, Kintu, won the Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013 and was longlisted for the Etisalat Prize in 2014. Her short story Let’s Tell This Story Properly won the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and will be included in her first collection of stories, Manchester Happened, to be published by Oneworld in 2019. In 2018, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction to support her writing. She lives in Manchester with her husband, Damian, and her son, Jordan, and teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Mohammed Hanif

Judge

Mohammed Hanif was born in Okara, Pakistan. He Graduated from Pakistan Air Force Academy as Pilot Officer but subsequently left to pursue a career in journalism. His first novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best first novel. His second novel, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, was shortlisted for the 2012 Wellcome Prize. He has written the libretto for a new opera, Bhutto. He writes regularly for The New York Times, BBC Urdu, and BBC Punjabi.

Chris Power

Judge

Chris Power’s short story collection Mothers was published in 2018. His column, A Brief Survey of the Short Story, has appeared in The Guardian since 2007. He has written for the BBC, The New York Times, and the New Statesman. His fiction has been published in Granta, The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, and The White Review, and broadcast on BBC Radio 4. He has acted as a judge for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. He lives with his family in London.

Karen Lord

Judge

Barbadian author and research consultant Karen Lord is known for her debut novel Redemption in Indigo, which won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut), and was nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. She is the author of the science fiction duology The Best of All Possible Worlds and The Galaxy Game, and the editor of the anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.

Courtney Sina Meredith

Judge

Courtney Sina Meredith is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and musician. She is also the Director of Tautai, New Zealand’s contemporary Pacific arts trust. Courtney describes her writing as an ‘ongoing discussion of contemporary urban life with an underlying Pacific politique.’ She launched her first book of poetry, Brown Girls in Bright Red Lipstick (Beatnik), at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair, and has since published a short story collection, Tail of the Taniwha (Beatnik 2016) to critical acclaim. Her play Rushing Dolls (2010) won a number of awards and was published by Playmarket in 2012. She has been selected for a number of international writers’ residencies including the prestigious Fall Residency at the University of Iowa where she is an Honorary Fellow in Writing, the Island Institute Residency in Sitka, Alaska, and the Bleibtreu Berlin Writers’ Residency in Charlottenburg, Berlin. In 2018 Courtney launched her first children’s book Secret World of Butterflies with Allen & Unwin and Auckland Museum. She has forthcoming titles for 2019. Courtney is of Samoan, Mangaian and Irish descent.

Frequently asked questions

Who is eligible to submit?

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The prize is open to all Commonwealth citizens aged 18 and over – please see the full list of Commonwealth countries here.

What do the winning writers receive?

The regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives a total of £5,000. The winning stories are published online by Granta and in a special print collection by Paper + Ink. The shortlisted stories are published in adda, the online literary magazine of the Commonwealth Foundation.

What is the word limit?

The story must be between 2,000 and 5,000 words.

Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Menu:

The 2019 prize winner

Regional winners

The Shortlist

This year’s judging panel

Caryl Phillips

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Mohammed Hanif

Chris Power

Karen Lord

Courtney Sina Meredith

Frequently asked questions

Who is eligible to submit?

What do the winning writers receive?

What is the word limit?

Resources & News

Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Menu:

The 2019 prize winner

Regional winners

The Shortlist

This year’s judging panel

Caryl Phillips

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Mohammed Hanif

Chris Power

Karen Lord

Courtney Sina Meredith

Frequently asked questions

Who is eligible to submit?

What do the winning writers receive?

What is the word limit?

Resources & News

Get the latest about the Short Story Prize