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The Shortlist has been announced

Commonwealth Short Story Prize

2026
View the shortlist

The shortlist has been announced!

We are thrilled to announce the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize shortlist. The international panel of judges has selected 25 writers from a pool of 7,806 entrants.

The shortlist brings together writers from 14 Commonwealth countries. This year marks new milestones, with a Maltese writer appearing on the shortlist for the first time, while all but three writers are new to this stage of the Prize. The recognition of stories written in Bengali and Malay further reflects the Prize’s role in bringing contemporary voices from across the Commonwealth to the fore. 

The shortlisted stories span a wide range of subjects, from intimate family relationships and love stories to experiences of migration, natural disasters, and the human cost of war. Told through a vivid and varied cast of protagonists—including musicians, athletes, migrant workers and even a stray dog—they move across continents and between rural and urban worlds. Across these settings, the stories explore themes of bereavement, forbidden love, displacement , and memory, while reflecting on identity, resilience , and the enduring search for belonging. 

Chair of the Judges, award-winning British novelist and dramatist Louise Doughty said: ‘Ultimately, our choices for the shortlist came down to authors who were not only excellent writers but, we felt, also had a grasp on the unique pleasures of the short story form, how it is a miniature carved in words that holds all the potential of a full-length novel in a few dense brushstrokes. We believe the writers in this shortlist have achieved all that and more, and we are immensely proud of our selection.’ 

Director-General of the Commonwealth Foundation, Razmi Farook, shared: ‘Congratulations to all the shortlisted writers. Each year, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize becomes more competitive, and this year’s shortlist reflects the remarkable creativity found across our Commonwealth. Storytelling continues to play a vital role in opening up alternative narratives and offering space for voices and perspectives that bring depth and context to the pressing issues facing Commonwealth citizens today — helping us better understand one another and imagine a more hopeful, inclusive future.’ 

Five regional winners, each from one Commonwealth region, will be announced on 13 May, with the overall winner to be announced in late June. All shortlisted stories will be published and available to read on our online literary magazine, adda. The five regional winners will also be published on Granta. 

Read on to learn about our shortlisted writers and their stories.

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The Shortlist

  • Orchard of Blackbirds
    Lois Akoma Antwi
    Ghana

    Told in the voice of a fourteen-year-old girl in a Bosnian town on the eve of war, this is a story of blue sneakers, stolen plums and a childhood unravelling. It traces the quiet days before violence arrives and the irreversible moment it does.

    ‘They came in the morning, when Mama’s bread was still rising and Baba had just left for the railway yard. At first, I thought it was a parade. Boots thundered against the street. I pressed my face to the glass, expecting flags, drums, maybe even music like in the old festivals.’ 

    Lois Akoma Antwi is a Ghanaian writer who gives narrative form to the human cost of war. She holds a degree in Political Science and English and is completing postgraduate studies in International Affairs and Diplomacy. Drawn to the human cost of conflict, she writes stories that give life to those history sidelines. Orchard of Blackbirds is her first internationally recognised work. 

  • The Runner's Gift
    Ken Odak Odumbe
    Kenya

    Set in Kenya’s highland running culture, ‘The Runner’s Gift’ follows Mercy, a gifted distance runner contending with inherited scars, family survival, and the hidden cost of excellence.

    ‘She remembers the first time. Sixteen years old, Thomas shouting encouragement. The metallic taste surprising her. “It’s nothing,” Thomas had said, wiping his own mouth. “The altitude gifts us blood. It’s the price. Keep running.”’

    Ken Odak Odumbe is a development professional and creative writer based in Nairobi, Kenya. He uses creative arts to depict and communicate complex societal issues. With over 19 years of experience in international development, he has engaged diverse stakeholders across Kenya, the African continent, and global platforms. He excels at bridging development perspectives and creative expression. 

  • The God under the Bed
    Dawn Immanuel 
    Nigeria

    In an overcrowded family home governed by an unseen god, a young girl comes of age under rigid rules, until one restless night when she decides to go in search of the truth.

    ‘Deep within those shadows, the god made itself at home. I have never seen it, so I couldn’t tell you what it looked like. I’m not sure anyone in my family ever has either, at least not clearly.’   

    Dawn Immanuel is a Nigerian writer and editor based in Ibadan. Driven by curiosity and random thoughts in the shower, she tells fiction and nonfiction stories of bold people, and of those who cannot tell their own. Dawn is also the founder of Patchwork Quilt, an end-to-end book production studio. The God under the Bed is her debut short story.

    Photo: Tomiwa Ajayi

  • Arewa Girls
    Hussani Abdulrahim
    Nigeria

    Narrated in the first-person plural (“we”), Arewa Girls journeys through the shared experience of Northern Nigerian women inhibited by patriarchal and religious-cultural norms. It’s a work of social realism that blurs the line between fiction and manifesto, mapping the emotional and generational inheritance of suppression, internalised misogyny, and the gradual awakening of self-awareness.

    ‘We are not doctors saving lives in hospitals. But that’s fine. We save lives in our own way. We are miraculous.’ 

    Hussani Abdulrahim is a Nigerian writer. He was shortlisted for the 2024 ALCS Tom-Gallon Trust Award. He won the 2023 Writivism Prize, the 2022 Toyin Falola Prize, and WRRs 2016 Green Author Prize. He was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2023. His work has appeared in Boston Review, Evergreen Review, Ubwali Lit Mag, ZamaShort, and The Flame Tree Writers Workshop Anthology. Hussani lives in Kano, Nigeria.

  • Shock Me I Shock You
    Ola W. Halim
    Nigeria

    Two siblings navigate family dysfunction and personal identities through a mischievous game.

    ‘From the window, Oyin and I watch her for a while. We try to guess what she’s whispering, why her lips move so quickly. Eventually Oyin decides it’s not our cup of garri, that she’s Daddy’s responsibility, and so we pull down the curtains and sit on the centre rug to play Shock-Me-I-Shock-You.’ 

    Ola W. Halim is a 2022 fellow of the Literary Laddership for Emerging African Authors. His work appears in SmokeLong Quarterly, Fractured Lit, Lolwe, Iskanchi, adda, The Forge, and the Best Small Fictions 2024. His short story, An Analysis of a Fragile Affair, was shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. A finalist for Gerald Kraak Prize 2022, his stories have received the Pushcart and Caine Prize nominations.  

  • New Things
    Oluwatoke Adejoye 
    Nigeria

    Set in Akure, 1999, during Nigeria’s transition to democracy and on the cusp of the new millennium, this story follows a teenage boy who loses his sole caretaker and must learn to navigate living with a new guardian and a country reinventing itself.

    ‘Rolake came to me in the middle of the night, while the pastor was holding a night-til-daybreak prayer vigil in the church. It was like that first day that she entered. No knock. No invitation.’ 

    Oluwatoke Adejoye is a Nigerian-born writer whose work has appeared in Harvard’s Transition Magazine, Room Magazine, The New Quarterly, and elsewhere. A lawyer by training with a professional background in film and publishing, she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She lives and works in Metro Vancouver, Canada.

    Photo: Sina Agunbiade

  • Me and Ma'am
    Lisa-Anne Julien
    South Africa

    A day in the life of the tangled relationship between a domestic worker and her employer.

    ‘Ma’am means well, even if she does choose the most inconvenient times to try and change my life.’ 

    Lisa-Anne, originally from Trinidad and Tobago, lives in Johannesburg. She received a Highly Commended Award in the 2008/09 Commonwealth Short Story competition. Her novel, If You Save Me, won the University of Johannesburg’s 2022 Debut Prize for Fiction. She was shortlisted in The Fountain Magazine’s 2024 Essay Prize and her fiction has appeared in Pree, the Caribbean literary magazine. Her writing residencies include Femrite, Yale Writers, and the Jakes Gerwel Foundation.

  • A Masculine Fest
    Anmana Manishita
    Bangladesh

    Set in 1950s East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, the story is about a young Bengali Muslim woman navigating the unexpected realities of womanhood.

    ‘They were not like the men of our house. They glimmered and glittered, like light rippling off from a crisp new note; our men were sovereigns—a grounded heaviness about them.’ 

    Anmana Manishita is working as a lecturer at BRAC University, and as an editorial assistant at University Press Limited. She has completed her Bachelors and Masters in English and English Literature from University of Dhaka. She loves to stare at the wall beside her bed, and she longs to have time enough to do nothing, so that she can do the things she loves to do. 

  • Mofiz - er Relation e Spark Nai
    Shazed Ul Hoq Abir
    Bangladesh

    A man in a Sundarbans village runs to revive the spark in his failing marriage while modern development slowly unsettles the fragile balance of his world.

    Translated from Bengali into English by Arunava Sinha and Shabnam Nadiya. 

    ‘He would have to build electrical power by running. “But it won’t do to run at any old speed.” Mafiz looked worried. ‘You said I have to run at the speed of light. How can a human run as fast as light?’’ 

    Shazed ul Hoq Khan Abir is a Bangladeshi writer born and raised in Dhaka. He studied English at Dhaka University. He has published eleven books in Bengali and received the Kali o Kalam Young Fiction Writer Award from Bengal Foundation in 2025. His play was staged by Dhaka Theatre in 2025. He also writes songs and makes documentaries, often drawing inspiration from the Buriganga River and the layered history of his city. 

  • Thirty-One Steps
    Rafaa Dalvi
    India

    Unfolding through a father’s nine-year vigil at Amritsar Junction, this is a story of waiting and the unbearable distance between a son who cannot return and parents who refuse to stop believing he will.

    ‘The bench at Platform Three had learnt the shape of Singh’s body. Nine years of waiting had carved his outline into the wooden slats. His tan suit, pressed each morning by his wife despite his protests, hung loose on bones that grew thinner with each passing train.’ 

    Rafaa Dalvi is a Mumbai-based writer who writes to centre voices left out of mainstream fiction. His self-published works include the micro-fiction trilogy Small is Big and short story collections Chasing Nirvana and Paasa Palat. An Amazon Pen to Publish runner-up and finalist, and an India Book of Records holder, he has an MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai. He is currently editing his debut literary novel, Brittle Gods.

  • Fighting Elsewhere
    Rupsa Dey
    India

    He could not tell his mother that he lost his job in Prague, or that he is gay, or that he supports her through sex work. When words hide, silence speaks out.

    ‘My mother never feared to tell me where I might encounter trouble, which life decision would become an eventual nightmare, what kind of lentil soup was tough for the stomach to digest, which red hot curry would draw the cold away from my head to my toes, and break me out in a sweat on a cold winter day. It didn’t matter that sitting in her cramped apartment in Howrah, my mother could never fathom the life I lived.’ 

    Rupsa Dey is a writer from West Bengal, India. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Jadavpur University. She is a 2023 South Asia Speaks fellow and a 2025 Breadloaf Scholar. Her work has been published in places such as Swamp Pink and Clarkesworld Magazine. She is working on her novel and drinking seven cups of tea! 

    Photo: Arko Sen

  • Mehendi Nights
    Sharon Aruparayil 
    India

    In a speculative world inspired by the chawls of Mumbai, where women are forbidden language, a girl with crooked teeth and red-stained fingers discovers that desire is a dialect no man can scrub clean.

    ‘They say that a woman alone after dark was not a woman at all; she was a story already being written by someone else’s mouth.’ 

    Sharon is a desi transplant in the gulf obsessed with love, loss, and the strange, shimmering places in between. Her work drifts between the speculative and the deeply personal, always circling back to the psychic weight of diaspora and the small violences that shape who we become. She is writing her first book and was recently nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize and the PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

  • Separuh Yang Hilang
    Mohamed Nasser Mohamed 
    Malaysia

    In a flood-stricken village, a father haunted by what was taken from him learns how memory, love, and survival reshape a broken life.

    Translated from Malay into English by Pauline Fan.

    ‘People say, if a shoe has lost its pair, just throw it away. I nodded when they spoke, then quietly placed it back on the rack, aligned with my slippers and Sarah’s.’ 

    Mohamed Nasser Mohamed is a Consulting Editor involved in over 150 publications since 2008. Active as a poet and blogger, his solo book Aku Kaki Sakat appeared in 2019, alongside his well-known poem Penyair Apakah Kita Ini?, also published in Indonesia. He hosts the weekly online talk series Cakap Apa Sahaja (CAS) since March 2021 with Nuha Pictures. His recent titles include 101 Propa Kucing Rumah, 101 Perkongsian Seminit, and 101 Detik, 1 Jiwa.

  • The Miles Between Us
    Jacqueline Chang
    Singapore

    This is a story of a Singaporean woman sorting through her mother’s estate, who discovers that 76,240 KrisFlyer miles cannot be inherited, transferred, or grieved. Only spent. 

    ‘The KrisFlyer miles of a dead person cannot be redeemed. The woman on the hotline said it like a line she had underlined with a ruler. Her voice carried that patient brightness unique to people trained to deliver bad news in complete sentences.’ 

    Jacqueline Chang is based in Singapore. She is currently pursuing an MA in Creative Writing. Her Conversational Portraits practice, which pairs extended conversation with photography, shapes how she listens and looks. Her writing finds tension in memory, family, and the ordinary.

  • The Bastion's Shadow
    John Edward DeMicoli
    Malta

    In Valletta, an NGO worker helping migrants begins to sense the island’s ancient bastions as silent witnesses to memory, where history and human dignity quietly converge.

    ‘Her grandfather used to say limestone remembered, but only because someone first pressed a memory into it. It drank in heat and salt and footsteps and held them long after people were gone.’ 

    John Edward DeMicoli is a Maltese writer and genealogist whose work explores the intersections of memory, history, and identity. Drawing on archival records and Malta’s layered past, he shapes historical discoveries into narrative form. His essays on Maltese culture and heritage have appeared in print and online publications. He has completed a historical saga awaiting publication.

  • Saudade
    Alison Armstrong
    United Kingdom

    An older sister tries to locate the meaning of an event in childhood.

    ‘I began to see the parrot differently after that. Looking into his cage as he looked back and bobbed his head and stepped from side to side. She made me see this sadness that I would rather not have seen. It made me extra set against her as though it were her fault, the loneliness it felt. The emptiness in the pale grey ring of its eye.’ 

    Alison Armstrong writes about memory (individual/cultural), she is interested in marginalised narratives and the way the past persists in interconnections of place. In 2024 she was a fellow of Fondation Jan Michalski. Her work has been supported by RSL, Society of Authors, ACE and New Writing North. She is working on a book about East Yorkshire. Her second novel, Museum of Infinite Light (Bluemoose) comes out next year. 

    Photo: Pheobe Cwerner

  • Chiddingfold
    Jennifer Harvey
    United Kingdom

    In the summer of 1978 a woman visits an English village with her two young daughters and finds herself contemplating her life and her marriage and what it means to call a place home.

    ‘Chiddingfold. She knew nothing about it. It was simply a name she’d seen on the bus timetable. But it appealed to her in ways she couldn’t quite express. The Englishness of it. ‘Chiddingfold’. Every time she said it a picture began to form in her mind. A picture that felt more like a longing.’ 

    Originally from Glasgow, Jennifer Harvey now lives in a small coastal town in Denmark. She is the author of three novels and her short fiction has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies. She is currently working on a new novel. When not writing she can be found walking on the beach or in the forest with her little dog.

  • The Metamorphosis of Miss Alice
    Cosmata Lindie
    Guyana

    This story follows the experience of a juvenile delinquent whose interactions with a frail and forgotten old woman teaches him to believe in the power of transformation. 

    ‘He knew that his visits were not secret from Miss Alice. She had seen him many times, as he climbed and hung with monkey-like agility among the branches, high overhead. But she had never shouted at him, and her age and infirmities made it impossible for her to chase him off, like most other people did.’   

    Cosmata Lindie is a Guyanese writer and visual artist of Indigenous heritage. She was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2023 and her short fiction has been published in “adda” (UK), “Doek! Literary Magazine” (Namibia), “FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction” (USA) and in “One Day, Congotay”, a collection of Caribbean folklore themed short stories published by the Trinidad & Tobago based Caribbean Books Foundation in 2024. She currently resides in the town of New Amsterdam in Guyana.

  • Plenty Time
    Celeste Mohammed
    Trinidad and Tobago

    In a Trinidadian post office, an elderly widow witnesses another woman’s desperate struggle for dignity, prompting a small act of kindness that restores her will to live.

    ‘Over the years, Mavis has become invisible to most people – especially the young ones who look right through her as if she’s made of glass.’ 

    Celeste Mohammed is a Trinidadian lawyer-turned-writer and the author of Pleasantview, winner of the 2022 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. Her second novel-in-stories, Ever Since We Small, was published in 2025. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University, Cambridge, Mass. A full-time writer, editor, and ghostwriter, she writes in Standard English and Trinidad Kriol while exploring the complexities of Caribbean life. She was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2024. 

  • The Serpent in the Grove
    Jamir Nazir
    Trinidad and Tobago

    Set in rural Trinidad, this is a story of a struggling farmer, a silenced young wife, and a grove that seems to remember what human beings try to bury. Steeped in desire, poverty and dread, it explores betrayal, survival and the stubborn force of a woman’s will.

    ‘Ask the oldest in the village and you’ll hear some version of: “It had a well there once, and a woman. The grove ain’t forget.”’ 

    Jamir Nazir is a Trinidadian writer of East Indian heritage whose work explores the cultural intersections of the Caribbean and the Indian diaspora. A prolific poet and author, with books published and others forthcoming, he is particularly known for his love of poetry. His writing draws on the landscapes, histories and emotional rhythms of Trinidad, where memory, heritage and identity converge to shape voice and imagination. 

  • Pom Pom Peedeem Pom
    Jason Dookeran
    Trinidad and Tobago

    A Trinidadian bassist flees to Lima to escape his past, but a relentless rhythm follows him across the sea, turning every sound, from factory machinery to his own heartbeat, into the music he tried to leave behind.

    ‘You can’t run from rhythm, boy. His father’s voice, salt-thick and certain. The music does find you. Always.’ 

    Jason is a Trinidadian writer exploring Caribbean identity through historical and contemporary fiction. His work ranges from pre-colonial indigenous narratives to modern urban Trinidad, examining cycles of violence, cultural survival, and moral complexity. Based in Buenos Aires, he brings an outsider-insider perspective to stories rooted in Trinidadian dialect, folklore, and the collision of tradition with contemporary realities. 

  • River Mouth
    Jochelle Greaves Siew
    Trinidad and Tobago

    Set in a fishing village in southern Trinidad, this story follows Amara as the disappearance of several girls fractures her community and exposes tensions simmering beneath its quiet shoreline.

    ‘Amara wiped her hands on a rag behind the counter, watching them through the mirror over the rum bottles. Their faces looked doubled in the glass—one real, one warped—and she wondered which version told the truth.’ 

    Jochelle Greaves Siew is a Trinidadian writer and PhD candidate in Public Policy and Management. While she has previously published in academic journals, River Mouth is her first submission to a writing competition. After completing her PhD, she plans to finish her first women’s fiction novel, partly inspired by her experiences of grief and life in academia. She is also developing another manuscript drawing on Caribbean history and folklore. 

  • Pot Hound Republic
    Roger-Mark De Souza
    Trinidad and Tobago

    This story, told in the voice of a sharp-tongued stray dog wandering the markets and streets of Port of Spain, highlights Trinidad’s divisions of class, belonging, and freedom—until a storm brings unexpected encounters that challenge what it means to be stray or sheltered.

    ‘In the Drag Mall, some does call it Little Africa, life beat steady like drum. Smoke and sweat rise together, making the heat shimmer. Each stall a sermon, each voice selling some kind of offering: bone, blessing, or breath. All under the same hard sun.’

    Roger-Mark De Souza is a Trinidad-born storyteller based in Washington, D.C. His fiction explores Caribbean identity, diaspora, and belonging across shifting geographies. He is currently completing “At the Ends of Islands,” a novel-in-stories tracing interconnected lives between the Caribbean and its global diaspora. His work features layered characters and reflects the complexity of diasporic life, bringing island voices and experiences into conversation with broader questions of identity, place, and connection. 

  • Bitter Water Village
    M.S. Bhatia 
    Australia

    In a rain-soaked village by a restless river, a fifteen-year-old finds her childhood collapsing under the weight of family silence and unspoken danger. As the village watches and waits, she must discover what it means to endure — and who she must become to survive.

    ‘Her eyes weren’t the ones he’d left behind. Not soft, not forgiving, but cold and fixed, like river stones worn smooth by current. Wei Yoon turned, walked to her room, and shut the door she hadn’t closed since the night he disappeared.’

    M. S. Bhatia lives in Australia. “Bitter Water Village” is his first serious venture to enter a short story for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, having abandoned five previous attempts. “When the grass was white” is a short story long-listed and subsequently published in Jump (Hawkeye Publishing, Sydney, 2022). He is a former academic and educator, and head of research at AsiaRisk, an economics consultancy. He has written for various media on political-economy. He immerses in good literary fiction and non-fiction, especially from non-Western countries, and protects his solitude.    

  • Second Skin
    Holly Ann Miller
    New Zealand

    Set on a farm in the Southern Alps of Aotearoa, Second Skin is a psychological examination of familial belonging in which the boundaries between humanity and nature are blurred.

    ‘Nina would do anything to preserve the softness of her son’s heart. Good things were too easily corrupted. She didn’t want him to see what she was about to do.’

    Holly Ann Miller began her creative writing journey in 2025 and, that same year, received honourable mention in both the 2025 NYC Midnight Short Story Competition and the AAASL Short Story Competition. She holds a BA in English Literature and Philosophy from Massey University and hopes to complete an MCW through them in future. She lives and works in the beautiful Bay of Islands on the East Coast of Aotearoa.

    Photo: Ruby Kawiti

This year’s judging panel

  • Photo: Max Kennedy

    Louise Doughty

    Chair

    Louise Doughty is the author of ten novels, the latest of which is A Bird in Winter, published by Faber & Faber UK. Her previous books include the bestseller Apple Tree Yard, which was adapted as a major BBC One TV series starring Emily Watson; Platform Seven, which has been filmed for ITVX and Black Water, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She has also written novels about the Roma Holocaust during World War Two, Fires in the Dark, and her own Romany-Traveller ancestry, Stone Cradle. She has been nominated for multiple awards including the Costa Novel Award, the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Sunday Times Short Story Prize and her work has been translated into thirty languages. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Folio Prize Academician, the recipient of two Honorary Doctorates for her contributions to literature and has judged many prizes including the Booker Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is also a screenwriter and journalist and in 2026 will publish a memoir, On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love.

  • Photo: Dirk Skiba

    Fred Khumalo

    Judge, Africa Region

    Fred Khumalo is the author of 19 books, which include novels, short story collections, journalism and works of biography. His famous Dancing the Death Drill has been translated into German, Setswana and isiZulu – with more translations into other local languages in the pipeline He has won numerous honours, including the European Union Literary Award (not to be mistaken confused with the European Literary Prize) and the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences Award. A journalist by training, he writes primarily in English but has also published two books in his mother tongue, Zulu.

    He holds an MA Creative Writing from Wits University, is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, a Fellow of the Academy of the Arts of the World (Cologne, Germany), a Fellow of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, a Fellow of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. He has been a judge on numerous South African writing contests including the European Union Literary Prize and Herman Charles Bosman Prize among others. He has participated in numerous writing residencies and literary festivals both in his native South Africa and beyond the borders of his own country. His first book, Touch My Blood was adapted for the stage by James Ngcobo in 2007.

  • Photo: Rajib Dhar

    Rifat Munim

    Judge, Asia Region

    Rifat Munim is an editor, journalist, bilingual writer, and translator based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He was the In-Charge of the books wing of the Daily Star (2012–2014) and the literary editor of Dhaka Tribune (2016–2021). He was a jury member for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2019. His books include Bangladesh: A Literary Journey Through 50 Short Stories (ed.). He was among the editors of Speak Out, a special issue focused on freedom of expression, published in 2022 by the Commonwealth Foundation. His English translations of Bengali poetry and short stories, and his articles on freedom of expression and different aspects of Bengali and South Asian fiction, have appeared in Outlook India, World Literature Today, Scroll, Your Impossible Voice, Asia News Network, Dhaka Tribune, and The Daily Star. His essay on the stories and novels written by Bangladesh’s preeminent writer Akhtaruzzaman Elias has been included in The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies. 

  • Photo: Carina Gartner Lamarche

    Norma Dunning (PhD)

    Judge, Canada and Europe Region

    Norma Dunning is a Padlei Inuk Canadian writer, professor and grandmother. She has published two collections of short stories, two collections of poetry and one work of nonfiction. Her future publications include two children’s books, Aput (2026) and Anaanatsiaq (2028) and her first novel titled Naoyak (2026). Her books have received esteemed literary awards and have translated into French, Greek and Amharic. Norma currently teaches for the Faculty of Indigenous Studies at the First Nations University of Canada.

    Books published: Annie Muktuk and Other Stories (UAP, 2017) – Danuta Gleed Award 2018, Eskimo Pie: a poetics of Inuit identity (Bookland, 2020), Taninna (the unseen ones) (D&M 2021) – Govenor General’s Award 2021, Akia (the other side) (Bookland, 2022) and Kinauvit? (What’s your name?) (D&M, 2022) – shortlist Shaughnessy Cohen Political Pen. Books forthcoming: Aput! (Snow) (Tradewinds, 2026), Anaanatsiaq (Tundra Books, 2028), Nayoak (D&M, 2026). 

  • Sharma Taylor

    Judge, Caribbean Region

    Sharma Taylor, a Jamaican writer and lawyer, was awarded the 2023 Institute of Jamaica’s Musgrave Bronze Medal for contribution to Literature. The University of the West Indies (Mona Campus) appointed her its Writer-in-Residence for semester II, 2024. Her work has won the 2020 Wasafiri Queen Mary New Writing Prize, the 2020 Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award and the 2019 Bocas Lit Fest’s Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize. She has been shortlisted four times for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize.  

    She was a judge in the 2022 and 2024 The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition organized by the Royal Commonwealth Society, the 2023 Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival (BCLF) Short Fiction Story Contest for Writers in the Caribbean and was on the jury for the 2023 Bocas Lit Fest Breakthrough Fellowships.  In 2024, she was published in The Cropper Foundations Caribbean Climate Justice anthology, “Writing For Our Lives” launched in November at the COP29 (the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Azerbaijan).  Her debut novel, “What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You” was published in 2022 in the UK and Commonwealth by Virago Press. 

  • Photo: Copyright Agency

    Maxine Beneba Clarke

    Judge, Pacific Region

    Maxine Beneba Clarke is the author of over fifteen books for adults and children, including the ABIA and Indie award-winning short fiction collection Foreign Soil, the critically acclaimed best selling memoir The Hate Race, the self-illustrated picture book When We Say Black Lives Matter, which was longlisted for the UK’s Kate Greenaway Medal, and the CBCA Honour Book The Patchwork Bike (illustrated by Van T Rudd), which won the 2019 Boston Globe Horn Prize for Best Picture Book. Her poetry collections include Carrying the World, which won the 2017 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, How Decent Folk Behave, and It’s the Sound of the Thing: 100 new poems for young people, which won the 2024 ABIA for Book of the Year for Younger Readers. Maxine is the inaugural Peter Steele Poet in Residence at the University of Melbourne (2023-2025). 

Frequently asked questions

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

  2. 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.

    If the winning short story is a translation into English, the translator will receive an additional prize of £750.

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

  4. The prize is only open to short fiction, but it can be in any fiction genre–science fiction, speculative fiction, historical fiction, crime, romance, literary fiction–and you may write about any subject you wish.

  5. We accept stories written in Bengali, Chinese, Creole, English, French, Greek, Malay, Maltese, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, Tamil, and Turkish. Stories that have been translated into English from any language are also accepted and the translator of any winning story receives additional prize money.

  6. Your submission must be unpublished in any print or online publication, with the exception of personal websites.

  7. Entries are initially assessed by a team of readers and a longlist of 200 entries is put before the international judging panel, comprising a chair and five judges, one from each of the Commonwealth regions – Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. All judges read entries from all regions.

    Entries in other languages are assessed by relevant language readers and the best submissions are selected for translation into English to be considered for inclusion on the longlist.

    The judging panel select a shortlist of around twenty-five stories, from which five regional winners are chosen, one of which is chosen as the overall winner.

    Please note that entries are read by real people at every stage of the judging process and not put through an AI system.

  8. Entries open from 1 September – 1 November every year.

    The other key dates for the prize are as follows:

    April: Shortlist revealed
    May: Regional winners announced
    June: Award ceremony and overall winner announced

  9. We now receive close to 8,000 entries each year. Due to the large volume of submissions, please note that we are unable to provide individual feedback on submissions.

  10. If you have any questions about your submission, please email them to creatives@commonwealthfoundation.com. Be sure to include your entry submission number to ensure we can assist you promptly.

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