2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Regional Winners Kanya D’Almeida in top 5

Doing Sri Lanka proud author Kanya D’Almeida has been announced as a regional winner at the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The Commonwealth Short Story Prize started in 2012 with the launch of Commonwealth Writers. Free to enter and with a global reach across five continents, the Prize seeks out talented writers and brings stories from new and emerging voices to an international audience. 

Now in its tenth year, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from the Commonwealth. This year’s regional winners have risen to the top from a record 6423 entries from 50 Commonwealth countries. Sri Lanka’s Kanya D’Almeida’s story I Cleaned The—’ is a story about the dirty work: domestic labour, abandonment, romantic encounters behind bathroom doors, and human waste, which is to say—the things we leave behind. 

Of  Kanya’s winning submission Judge, Khademul Islam said “ Even among Asia’s gratifyingly strong showing in this year’s Commonwealth short fiction sweepstakes, Kanya’s submission stood out. A life-affirming story of love among the rambutan and clove trees of Sri Lanka – love for a baby not one’s own, love for a high-spirited elderly woman. Love found not among the stars but in human excrement. Literally. And all the more glorious for it. Just as class differences are subtly shaded, so too the narrator is aptly, and exquisitely, named Ishwari (Sanskrit for Goddess, with a capital ‘G’). A tale powerfully realized."

Chair of the Judges, South African novelist Zoë Wicomb, stated: 

‘Rereading a smaller group of stories, looking at them once again in the fiercer, narrower light of competition, is a daunting step in the judging process. We celebrate difference and recoil from the idea of ranking works that are so diverse and encompass such a range of subjects, but that is what we agreed to do. We have come to know these stories intimately, thought about them more carefully after previous debates, and juggled them in our hearts. Thus we meet with fingers crossed and loins girded for agonistic discussion and argumentation. But we have also come to know and trust each other in this process, and so we arrive at our regional winners with their captivating stories of insight and compassion, stories that in their distinctive voices speak to our troubled times."

The five regional winners’ stories will be published online by the literary magazine Granta in the run-up to the announcement of the overall winner on 30 June. They will also be published in a special print edition by Paper + Ink, available online and in bookshops from 30 June.