`Rich diversity of themes’ among nominees for Commonwealth Short Story Prize

The Commonwealth Foundation is scheduled to announce the overall winner of the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize on Tuesday June 27.  This will be done in an on-line ceremony starting at 12.00 pm UCT.

This is one of the largest, most established international literary prizes, but it is exclusive to writers from the Commonwealth in countries distributed across all five continents of the world.  For the purpose of covering these nations, there are five  geographical regions: Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean and the Pacific.  Writers compete within their Regions and each Region reduces the competitors to a Regional Shortlist and then choose a Regional Winner.  The five Regional Winners then compete for the Overall Prize.

The competing 2023 Regional Winners are Hana Gammon (Africa), Agnes Chew (Asia), Rue Baldry (Canada and Europe), Kwame McPherson (Caribbean) and Himali McInnes (Pacific).  They triumphed over a shortlist of 28 out of thousands of entries across the regions.