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. We received a record-breaking 7,920 entries this year. Thank you to everyone who entered a story.

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), writer and journalist Dr Anita Sethi (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

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.
Dr Anita Sethi
Judge, Canada and Europe Region
Dr Anita Sethi is an award-winning writer and journalist and author of the acclaimed book I Belong Here: a Journey Along the Backbone of Britain, which won a Books Are My Bag award and was nominated for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing, the Great Outdoors Award and Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Priz. Anita has written columns, features and reviews for newspapers and magazines including the Guardian and Observer, Sunday Times, the i paper, Independent, Telegraph, BBC Wildlife, Vogue, New Statesman, Granta, Times Literary Supplement, among others. In broadcasting, she has appeared on several BBC radio programmes. She has been a Judge of the Women’s Prize, British Book Awards, Costa Book Awards, and Society of Authors Awards among others. She has interviewed many high-profile writers, artists, musicians, and public figures.
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

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
The prize is open to all Commonwealth citizens aged 18 and over – please see the full list of Commonwealth countries here.
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.
The story must be between 2,000 and 5,000 words.
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.
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.
You cannot enter a story you have submitted in previous years.
Your submission must be unpublished in any print or online publication, with the exception of personal websites.
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.
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
Please note that we are unable to provide feedback on submissions. We appreciate your understanding.
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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Sponsored by: Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Commonwealth Short Story Prize

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

Menu:

This year’s judging panel

Dr Vilsoni Hereniko

Nsah Mala

Saras Manickam

Dr Anita Sethi

Lisa Allen-Agostini

Apirana Taylor

Frequently asked questions

How do I know you’ve received my entry?

Who is eligible to submit?

What do the winning writers receive?

What is the word limit?

Is there any required theme or genre?

What languages can I write my story in?

Can I enter a story I have previously submitted?

Can the story be published?

How is the prize judged?

When do submissions open and close ?

Do you provide feedback on entries?

Where should questions about submissions be directed to?

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