Application Deadline: 1 November 2015 (12 noon GMT)
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is an annual award for unpublished short fiction administered and funded by the Commonwealth Foundation.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.
Eligibility Criteria
- Entrants must be citizens of a Commonwealth country
- Writers from non-Commonwealth countries (including the Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe) are not eligible.
- For regional purposes, entries will be judged by country of citizenship. Where the writer hasdual citizenship, the entry will be judged in the region where the writer is permanently resident.
- Entrants must be aged 18 years or over.
- There is no requirement for the writer to have current residence in a Commonwealth country, providing she/he is a citizen of a Commonwealth country.
- All entries will be accepted at the discretion of Commonwealth Writers which will exercise its judgement, in consultation with the prize chair as necessary, in ruling on questions of eligibility.
- The ruling of the chair on questions of eligibility is final, and no further correspondence will be entered into.
Entry rules
- Entries must be made by the writer.
- Entries will only be accepted via the online entry form.
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The deadline for receipt of entries is 1 November 2015 (12 noon GMT)
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Only one entry per writer may be submitted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize
- The story must be the entrant’s own work.
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The story must be original and should not have been published anywhere in full or in part before 1 May 2016.
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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 previously submitted to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize are not eligible.
- All entries must be in English
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Entries must be 2,000 words minimum, 5,000 words maximum
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Entries should be uploaded in a PDF document
Prize regions
Africa:Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia,Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia.
Prize:
- There will be five winners, one from each region.
- One regional winner will be selected as the overall winner.
- The overall winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize receives £5,000 and
- The remaining four regional winners £2,500.
- If the winning short story is a translation into English, the translator receives additional prize money: £2,000 for the overall winning story and £1,000 for a regional winning story.
For More Information:
Visit the Official Webpage of the 2016 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Writing Contest