The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing 2023 is now accepting applications. The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is given each year to a short story written by an African author who has been published in English, whether or not the author is based in Africa.
A recognized charity, the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing uses its yearly literary prize to promote African writing to a larger audience. In addition to managing the Prize, they promote African writers to readers through a number of open forums and support up-and-coming authors in Africa by hosting the annual Caine Prize writers’ workshop, which alternates between several African nations each year.
Benefits:
- Winner receives a cash prize of £10,000. Four shortlisted writers receive a cash prize of £500
each. - Shortlisted writers will be invited to London to participate in a series of public events.
- Selected writers from the judges longlist will be invited to an annual workshop in an African
Country.
Eligibility:
- 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 February 1, 2018
and January 25, 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- Self-published and unpublished works are not eligible.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.
Application:
Each story must be submitted by the publisher via the entry form by January , 2023.
