2024 Commonwealth Short Story Prize

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is an annual award for unpublished short fiction administered and funded by the Commonwealth Foundation. Entrants must be citizens of a Commonwealth coutry aged 18 and over.

The story should be adult fiction. There are no restrictions on setting, genre or theme. Entries must be 2,000 words minimum, 5,000 words maximum.

The story must be original work and should not have been published anywhere, in full or in part, in any language, before 1 May 2024.

Submissions are accepted in English, Bengali, Chinese, Creole, English, French, Greek, Malay, Maltese, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, Tamil, and Turkish.

The competition is free to enter.

There will be five winners, one from each region (Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, Caribbean, Pacific). The overall winner will receive £5,000 and the remaining four regional winners £2,500.

We are keen to encourage quality submissions, so suggest writers to check their stories before submitting using Prowritingaid. They have free and paid versions and are the best writing software we know to help improve grammar, readability and check for repetition, ‘sticky’ sentences and suggest alternatives.