AKO Caine Prize for African Writing 2023 ($10,000 prize)

Deadline: January 26, 2023

Applications are open for the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing 2023. The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is an annual award for a short story by an African writer, published in English, whether they reside in Africa or elsewhere.

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is a registered charity whose aim is to bring African writing to a wider audience using their annual literary award. In addition to administering the Prize, they work to connect readers with African writers through a series of public events, as well as helping emerging writers in Africa to enter the world of mainstream publishing through the annual Caine Prize writers’ workshop which takes place in a different African country 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• Self-published and unpublished works are not eligible.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.

Click here to submit

For more information, visit AKO Caine Prize.