Canadian Vincentian writer Chanel Sutherland has been awarded the prestigious £5,000 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for her evocative and daring story Descend, edging out thousands of entries from across the globe.
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize celebrates the best piece of unpublished short fiction from the 56 member countries of the Commonwealth. Sutherland’s win comes after her selection as the regional winner for Canada and Europe, and she now takes home the overall prize, which is valued at approximately $9,329 CAD.
Her winning story, Descend, imagines a ship of enslaved Africans, not only sinking but speaking — their silenced lives surfacing in voices full of memory and resistance. “I took a risk with Descend — its shape, its voices — because I believed every enslaved person deserves to have their story told with dignity,” Sutherland said in a statement. “I can’t tell all the stories or restore the lives that were stolen, but I’m humbled that this one resonates.”
Chanel Sutherland, who grew up in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and now lives in Montreal, said her journey as a writer began as a child scribbling stories in the sand. “To go from that little girl with fleeting words to now being recognized with such a prestigious and global prize is something I could never have dreamed possible,” she added. “Winning feels deeply affirming — as if that little girl scribbling in the sand was always right to believe that stories mattered.”
The author is no stranger to literary acclaim. She previously won the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize and the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Her debut short story collection, Layaway Child, is set to be published in spring 2026 and will include the story that won her the CBC Short Story Prize.
The regional winners of this year’s Commonwealth Short Story Prize — each receiving £2,500 — include Joshua Lubwama (Africa), Faria Basher (Asia), Subraj Singh (Caribbean), and Kathleen Ridgwell (Pacific). Their works will be published online by Granta and in print by Paper + Ink.
Winners were selected from 7,920 entries by a panel of distinguished judges, chaired by Vilsoni Hereniko and including Nsah Mala, Saras Manickam, Anita Sethi, Lisa Allen-Agostini, and Apirana Taylor. All winning stories are available on the Commonwealth Foundation’s literary platform, adda.
