Deadline: January 26, 2023.

The AKO Caine Prize Award for African Writing is an annual literary award for a published short story by an African writer. In addition to the £10,000 prize, they invite five shortlisted writers to London for a series of events including public readings, interviews with media institutions, private event with agents, and an invitation to the 2023 award ceremony where the winner will be announced.

ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

• The story must have been published in the five years preceding the submissions deadline. For 2023 eligibility, the judges will only consider work published between 1st February 2018 and 25th January 2023.
• Entries must be more than 3,000 words or less than 10,000 words.
• Entries must be submitted by a publisher. This includes publishers of physical and digital books, literary journals, magazines, and literary arts oriented websites.
• Writers must be over 18 years of age at the time of submission
• Self-published and unpublished works are not eligible.
• Publishers are encouraged to submit multiple short stories as long as they do not submit more than one story by the same author.
• Stories may only be entered for consideration for the AKO Caine Prize once. Unfortunately this means that you may not re-submit a story for consideration, even if it was not selected for the shortlist.
• Genres not eligible for entry include: stories for children, factual writing, academnic essays, plays, poetry and autobiography/biography.
• Submissions must specify which African country the author comes from and the short story word count.
• Publishers are required to upload a ‘publisher’s letter’ with each submission. See below for more information:
  • What should the publisher’s letter include? Publishers are required to provide:
    • Name of the writer(s).
    • Title of the story or stories being submitted.
    • Word count of each submitted story.
    • The qualifying nationality of the writer(s)
    •  The date of publication of the story or stories. 
    • Confirmation of consent from the writer(s) whose stories are being submitted for the Prize.

APPLICATION

• Each story must be submitted by the publisher via the entry form
• The submission form will become available via our submission portal when the submissions window opens

OFFICIAL LINK