You can now submit your stories to compete for the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Award. All stories are appreciated as your talents would speak for you and not your personalities.
Entry starts from the first of September, 2017 and runs to the first of November 2017.
Awards will be given for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2,000–5,000 words) in English. Regional winners receive £2,500 and the overall winner receives £5,000. Translated entries are also eligible, as are stories written in the other languages like the original Bengali, Chinese, Kiswahili, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan and Tamil.
The competition is free to enter.
What Are The Entry Rules For The 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize?
They are as follows:
Eligibility and entry rules
Please read these eligibility and entry rules before
beginning the online entry process. The online form will be available from the
opening date, 1 September 2017.
Submission of an entry is taken as acceptance
of the entry rules.
For any entry or
eligibility queries not covered below, please email [email protected]
for clarification before submitting an entry.
Opening date
1 September 2017
Closing date
Entries must be submitted via the
online entry form by 1 November 2017
(11.59pm in any time zone)
No entries will be
considered if submitted after this date.
1. About the Prize
a.
The Commonwealth
Short Story Prize is an annual award for unpublished short fiction administered
and funded by the Commonwealth Foundation.
b. The Commonwealth
Short Story Prize is part of Commonwealth
Writers, the cultural
initiative of the Commonwealth Foundation.
c. The prize covers the Commonwealth regions of 1. Africa, 2. Asia, 3.
Canada and Europe, 4. Caribbean and 5. Pacific. (See Section 4 for countries in
each region).
d. The international judging panel comprises one judge from each of the
five regions. Please note that while the entries will be judged regionally, all
judges will read and deliberate on entries from all regions.
e. 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 will receive £5,000 and
the remaining four regional winners £2,500. If the winning short story is a
translation into English, the translator will receive additional prize money.
f. The final selection will be judged by an international judging panel;
experienced readers will assist the named judges in selecting the long lists.
2.
Eligibility
a.
Entrants must be citizens of a Commonwealth country
– please see Section 4 for the list of Commonwealth countries. The Commonwealth
Foundation will request verification
of citizenship before winners are selected. Writers from non-Commonwealth
countries (including the Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe) are not eligible.
b.
For regional purposes, entries will be judged
by country of citizenship. Where the writer has dual citizenship, the entry
will be judged in the region where the writer is permanently resident.
c.
Entrants must be aged 18 years or over
on 1 November 2017.
d.
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.
e.
All entries will be
accepted at the discretion of the Commonwealth Foundation 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.
3. Entry rules
a.
Entries including those in translation
must be made by the writer.
b.
Entries will only be accepted via the
online entry form.
c.
The deadline for receipt of entries is
1 November 2017 (11.59pm in any time zone).
d. Only one entry per writer may be submitted for the Commonwealth Short
Story Prize.
e.
The story must be the entrant’s own
work.
f.
The story must be original and should
not have been published anywhere in full or in part before 1 May 2018. 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.
g.
Entries previously submitted to the
Commonwealth Short Story Prize are not eligible.
h.
Entries should be submitted in English,
with the following exceptions: writers
from Mozambique who write in Portuguese, and writers who write in Bengali,
Chinese, Kiswahili, Malay, Samoan, Tamil and who do not
have an English translation of their story, may submit their stories in the
original language. Translations of short stories written in other
languages are eligible if submitted by the writer (not the translator) and
provided the translator is also a citizen of a Commonwealth country.
i.
Entries must be 2,000 words minimum,
5,000 words maximum.
j.
Entries should be uploaded in a PDF
document. Please save your document as a
PDF and use the title of the story as the file name. Please note the story must not be saved as ‘Commonwealth Story’,
‘Short Story’ or any other generic title. If it is not possible to save the
entry as a PDF document, it may be uploaded as a Microsoft Word document, with
the file name in the same format as above. The first page should include the
name of the story and the number of words.
k.
The author’s details should be
included on the entry form. They must not be given anywhere on the uploaded
document. All entries are judged anonymously.
l.
Where applicable, the translator’s
details should be included on the entry form.
m. All entries
should be submitted in Arial 12 point font and double line spacing. All pages
should be numbered and include a header with the title of the story.
n.
There are no restrictions on setting,
genre or theme.
o.
The story should be adult fiction and must
not have been written for children alone.
p.
Entrants agree as a condition of entry
that the prize organisers may publicise the fact that a story has been entered
or shortlisted for the Prize.
q.
Worldwide copyright
of each story remains with the writer. Commonwealth
Writers will have the unrestricted right to publish the winning stories
(the overall winning story and the four regional winning stories) in an anthology
and for promotional purposes.
r.
The overall and regional winners will be
expected to take part in publicity activities including social media
where possible.
s.
The overall and
regional winners will be expected to undertake a mutually acceptable programme of regional outreach activities
to develop and promote Commonwealth
Writers.
4. Prize regions
Africa: Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya,
Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Seychelles,
Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia. Overseas Territories:
St Helena, Tristan Da Cunha, Ascension Island.
Asia: Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam,
India, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka.
Canada and Europe: Canada, Cyprus, Malta, United
Kingdom. Overseas Territories: Gibraltar, Falkland Islands.
Caribbean : Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas,
Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St
Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago. Overseas
Territories: Anguilla, Bermuda, British
Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Turks and Caicos Islands.
Pacific: Australia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New
Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.
Overseas Territory: Pitcairn.
Only one entry per writer may be submitted.
If you have written yours already, then you can submit it here and then hope to win this highly competitive award.
If you have written yours already, then you can submit it here and then hope to win this highly competitive award.