In September 2014, the call for entry for the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story competition was declared open, see report here.
According to the Commonwealth writers organisation, the competition attracted nearly 4000 entries and twenty-two stories from eleven countries have been shortlisted.
As the competition proceeds, five regional winners will be announced on 28 April, 2015.
The shortlist consist of two writers from the UK, three writers from Trinidad and Tobago, three Canadians, three Australians, one writer from New Zealand, two South Africans, one Jamaican, two Kenyans, three Indians, one writer from Fiji and one Nigerian.
See below a passage from the story of the Nigerian that was shortlisted.
Author: Lesley Nneka Arimah
Country: Nigeria
Story: Light
When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not yet know what the world did to daughters. He did not know how quickly it would wick the dew off her, how she would be returned to him hollowed out, relieved of her better parts. Now, in the before of it, they are living in Port Harcourt in a bungalow in the old Ogbonda Layout. Her mother is in America reading for a Masters in Business Administration. She has been there for almost three years in which her 11-year-old bud of a girl has bloomed. Enebeli and the girl have survived much in her absence, including a disturbance at the market which saw him and the girl separated for hours while people stampeded, trying to get away from a commotion that turned out to be two warring market women who'd had just about enough of each other's tomatoes. They survived a sex talk, birthed by a careless joke an uncle had made at a wedding, about the bride taking a cup of palm wine to her husband and leaving with a cup of, well, and the girl had questions he might as well answer before she asked someone who might take it as an invitation to demonstrate.
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