Commonwealth short story prize now invites Kiswahili entries

The organisers of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize have, for the first time, invited original submissions in the Kiswahili, Portuguese and Bengali languages.

The pilot scheme augments the translation initiative that has been running for the past three years. Although it has been useful in attracting more entries, it has not turned out as its architects had envisaged.

“The short story prize has been open for entries in translation since we launched it in 2012. We recognise, however, that it’s not always easy for new writers to access translations of their stories. To this end, for the last few weeks of entry, we’re testing out a scheme to attract more entries in other languages,” said Emma D’Costa, programme officer of the Commonwealth Writers — the cultural initiative of the Commonwealth Foundation that administers the prize.

“We are inviting writers who write in Bengali, Portuguese and Swahili, who are citizens of a Commonwealth country and who do not have an English translation of their story, to submit their stories in the original language. As part of the judging process, they will first be read by experienced Bengali, Portuguese and Kiswahili readers. Any stories which are successful at this first stage will be translated into English to be read by the international judging panel,” added Ms D’Costa.

The decision to start with these three languages, she explained, is because of the different projects Commonwealth Writers runs in East Africa and Bangladesh, and to increase enthusiasm in Mozambique. Should results from this pilot prove positive, and depending on available resources, Ms D’Costa says they hope to extend it to other languages.

“Commonwealth Writers has run a translation project in Bangladesh to support literary translation skills development and promote contemporary writing from Bangladesh, hence Bengali. We’ve also worked in East Africa, running short story, editors’ and non-fiction workshops, and we chose Portuguese as the third language to enable more entries to be submitted from Mozambique where fewer writers write in english — in four years there has been only one Mozambican entry submitted for the prize,” she said. 

The deadline for submission of entries is November 1, 2015.

The prize is awarded for the best unpublished short story of between 2,000 and 5,000 words in English, regardless of whether it was originally written in that language or translated into it.

Five different Commonwealth regions are included — Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, Caribbean, and Pacific — and the prize offers one of the highest amounts for an international short story competition open to unpublished writers.

Each regional winner receives $3,835. The overall winner receives an additional $7,670. The translator also receives the same amount.

Writers from East Africa have made a pretty strong showing in this prize. In 2014, Uganda’s Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi won the overall prize for her short story Let’s Tell This Story Properly, which explores the complex world of death, bereavement, and entrenched cultural mores.

Judges praised it for its “risk- taking, grace and breadth,” with Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, the chair of the judging panel, noting how “its narrative style draws on a powerful national heritage of dramatic storytelling, significantly expanded our understanding of the possibilities of the short story form.”

This year’s judging panel will be chaired by Gillian Slovo, a South African resident in London, who has 13 published books to her name. Her next novel, Ted Days, will be published in March 2016. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.