The Commonwealth Short Story Prize, now in its fourteenth year, has been awarded for the best short fiction from the Commonwealth regions of Africa, Asia, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.

In “Descend”, the overall winning entry in 2025 by Canadian Vincentian writer Chanel Sutherland, men, women and children chained in the dark hold of a ship crossing the Middle Passage share fragments of memory, grief and defiance. Rooted in oral tradition, it is a testament to the stories that carry us when everything else has been taken.

The other winning stories – by Joshua Lubwama (Uganda), Faria Basher (Bangladesh), Subraj Singh (Guyana) and Kathleen Ridgwell (Australia) – sound notes of defiance as well: a young boy dodges fierce maternal authority to enrol in football camp; an “expiring woman” loses pieces of herself until being put on the spousal market to avert disintegration; a mother fights to protect her baby from a supernatural predator on the eve of hard-won independence from Britain; and young love grows roots despite cultural differences and racial tensions.

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is a prestigious annual award for the best work of unpublished short fiction from within the Commonwealth. Managed by the Commonwealth Foundation, it was set up to inspire, develop and connect writers and storytellers across the five global regions.