Submit to the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing | Deadline: January 26, 2023

December 13, 2022

The AKO Caine Prize for African Writing is currently accepting submissions of short stories for its 2023 edition.

The prize, in its 23^rd year, is one of Africa’s oldest and most prestigious short story prizes, and is awarded to the best short story by an African writer under 15,000 words, published in English or translated into English from another language. The winner is awarded a cash prize of £10,000, and four shortlisted writers will receive £500 each.

The prize is equally notable for catapulting its winners to stardom. Several of Africa’s most successful writers kickstarted their careers with a Caine Prize win or shortlist, including Laila Lalami, Helon Habila, Binyavanga Wainaina, E.C Osondu, NoViolet Bulawayo, and Meron Hadero.

Rules for Entry

Writers must be 18 years of age as of November 24, 2022
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 or literature-oriented websites.
Self-published and unpublished works are not eligible.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 as the judges will only consider one work per writer in any given year.
Stories may only be entered for consideration for the 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, academic essays, plays, poetry and autobiography/biography.
Submissions must specify which African country the author comes from and the short story word count.
Publishers should not submit watermarked stories.
Publishers are required to upload a ‘publisher’s letter’ with each submission. See below for more information:
- The publisher’s letter should include name of the writer(s), title of the story or stories, word count of each story, the qualifying nationality of the writer(s), the date of publication of the story or stories, and confirmation of consent from the writer(s).