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Commonwealth Short Story Prize

2025

The 2026 prize will open for submissions on 1 September 2025.

The 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize is now closed for entries and the judging process is underway.

The shortlist will be announced in April, the regional winners in May, and the overall winner in June 2025.

The 2025 judging panel is chaired by award-winning writer and filmmaker Dr. Vilsoni Hereniko. He is joined by writer and poet Nsah Mala (Africa), 2019 regional prize winner Saras Manickam (Asia), author Irenosen Okojie (Canada/Europe), writer, editor and comedian Lisa Allen-Agostini (Caribbean), and poet, playwright, short storywriter Apirana Taylor (Pacific).

The 2026 prize will open on 1 September 2025.

For any inquiries regarding the prize, please email: creatives@commonwealthfoundation.com

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This year’s judging panel

  • Dr. Vilsoni Hereniko

    Chair

    Dr. Vilsoni Hereniko is an award-winning writer and filmmaker and Professor at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Hawaiʻi. His first narrative feature film The Land Has Eyes premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was Fiji’s submission to the Academy Awards in 2004. It also won Best Dramatic Feature at the Toronto ImagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. In 2022 his short film Sina ma Tinirau won ‘Best Animated Short’ at the Berlin Independent Film Festival and the Los Angeles International Film Festival. In 2022 he received a ‘Star of Oceania’ award in Film, Media and the Arts.

  • Photo: Dilman Dila

    Nsah Mala

    Judge, Africa Region

    Nsah Mala (born Kenneth Nsah) PhD, is an award-winning, multilingual poet, writer, children’s author, literary critic, and interdisciplinary scholar, from Cameroon. Writing in English, French, and Mbessa, he has authored and co-edited numerous poetry volumes, including Bites of Insanity, CONSTIMOCRAZY: Malafricanising Democracy, and Corpses of Unity – Cadavres de l’Unité. His poetry and short fiction appear in many anthologies, magazines, and journals across the globe. An alumnus of the Caine Prize Writing Workshop, Nsah has won the Ministry of Arts and Culture Short Story Prize in Cameroon and le Prix André -Malraux in France, among others. His PhD thesis, from Aarhus University, focused on Comparative Literature and Environmental Humanities and won le Prix de thèses francophones en Prospective (2022) from Fondation 2100 and L’Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie.

  • Photo: Annice Lyn

    Saras Manickam

    Judge, Asia Region

    Saras Manickam’s collection of stories, My Mother Pattu, was published by Penguin Random House (Southeast Asia). In 2024, it was recognised by PEN Malaysia as one of the most significant books written by a Malaysian. The titular story won the regional prize for Asia in the 2019 Commonwealth Short Story Contest. Since then, it has been included in Bloomsbury’s ‘The Art and Craft of Asian Stories’, and in ‘The Best of Malaysian Short Fiction in English 2010-2020′. Saras Manickam worked at several jobs while writing her stories. Her various work experiences enabled insights into characters, and life experiences, shaping the authenticity which mark her stories.

  • Photo: David Kwaw Mensah

    Irenosen Okojie

    Judge, Canada and Europe Region

    Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language and ideas. Her novel, Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have been nominated for and won multiple awards. Her journalism has featured in The New York Times, The Guardian and Huffington Post. She is a Contributing Editor for The White Review as well as And Other Stories. She co-presented the BBC’s Turn Up for The Books podcast, alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman Dan Smith. Her work has been optioned for the screen and she has judged various literary prizes including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, the BBC National Short Story Award and the Dublin Literary Award. She was a judge for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Formerly the Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021. She is the director and founder of Black to the Future festival. Her new novel Curandera is published by Dialogue Books.

  • Photo: Abigail Hadeed

    Lisa Allen-Agostini

    Judge, Caribbean Region

    Lisa Allen-Agostini is a writer, editor and stand-up comedian from Trinidad and Tobago. She is the author of Death in the Dry River (1000Volt Press, 2024), Home Home (Papillote Press, 2019, and Delacorte Press, 2020), and The Bread the Devil Knead (Myriad Editions, 2021), which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2022. She is a 2024 Fall Fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Lisa is working on a memoir in poetry and a novel set in the world of steelpan, the national instrument of her homeland, Trinidad.

  • Photo: Himiona Grace

    Apirana Taylor

    Judge, Pacific Region

    Apirana Taylor is from Aotearoa/New Zealand. He is of Pakeha (European) and Maori descent. His Maori tribes are Ngati Porou, Te Whanau Apanui and Ngati Ruanui. Apirana is an internationally published poet,  playwright, short storywriter, actor, novelist, musician and storyteller. He has been Writer in Residence at Canterbury and Massey Universities and been invited to attend international festivals. His work is included in many New Zealand and international anthologies. He reads his short stories and poetry on tours of schools, tertiary institutions, universities, marae, galleries and prisons.

Frequently asked questions

  1. If you receive a reference number on the last page of your submission, we will have received your entry. The email acknowledgement can get trapped in spam filters

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

  3. 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.

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

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. You cannot enter a story you have submitted in previous years.

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

  9. 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 stories, from which five regional winners are chosen, one of which is chosen as the overall winner.

  10. Entries open from 1 September 2024 – 1 November 2024.

    The other key dates for the prize are as follows:

    April 2025: Shortlist revealed
    May 2025: Regional winners announced
    June 2025: Award ceremony and overall winner announced

  11. Please note that we are unable to provide feedback on submissions. We appreciate your understanding.

  12. 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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