Ese Erheriene short story wins Future Worlds Prize in competition first

Ese Erheriene has won the £4,500 Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour, with her "evocative and well-executed" short story The Suit Sellers of Kowloon. It is the first time a short story has won the competition.

The runner-up this year is Farah Maria Rahman, who has won £2,500 for her novel Tribe of the Snow Leopards.

Future Worlds Prize was founded by author Ben Aaronovitch in 2020, and was formerly known as the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award.

Erheriene was announced as the winner in a ceremony held at Penguin Random House UK’s Nine Elms office on 10th June. The winning story follows a group of men who work as suit sellers and tailors in Kowloon, Hong Kong. "The reader follows Siddharth as, one by one, sellers begin to go missing under mysterious circumstances - but the thread running through it all is the love story between Siddharth and his wife: Onovughakpor," the synopsis says.

The judges said: “The Suit Sellers of Kowloon stayed with us, and is surprising without giving too much away at the beginning. Good scene-setting and slick character introductions make for an evocative and well-executed story.” Meanwhile, the runner-up is a book about friendship set on a planet "much like Earth", and the judges described it as a "story with heart and soul".

Moreover, Zita Abila is among the six shortlisted writers who will all get £850 each, with The Unbound Atlas. Abila is joined on the list by Nelita Aromona, shortlisted for Blood on Shadowed Blades, and Isha Karki for Ek Haseena Thi. The final three shortlisted stories are The Yawn of the Pond by Inigo Laguda, Walk in Fire by Ruairidh MacLean, and Let None Through by M A Seneviratne.

The shortlisted writers, the runner-up and the winner will also receive mentoring from someone on the list of the prize’s publishing partners, which comprises Bloomsbury Publishing, Daphne Press, Orion Books’ Gollancz, Penguin Random House’s Michael Joseph, Hachette’s SFF imprint Orbit, Hodder’s Hodderscape, and Pan Macmillan’s Tor.

This year’s prize was judged by M H Ayinde, the 2021 Future Worlds Prize winner, and author Isabelle Dupuy. They were joined by the author Femi Fadugba, and the founder of the Originate Literary Agency, Natalie Jerome, as well as the Arthur C Clarke Award-winning author Tade Thompson. 

The 2023 winner was Mahmud El Sayed for his novel What the Crew Wants.