McPherson wins 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize

Jamaican writer Kwame McPherson has won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for his story "Ocoee", named after the Florida town and site of a brutal racist attack in 1920.

McPherson, who this year entered the prize for the seventh time, triumphed over 6,641 entrants worldwide to take home the £5,000 prize.

The Commonwealth Foundation announced his win in an online ceremony, presented by Jamaican journalist Dionne Jackson Miller. "Ocoee" interweaves Caribbean folklore and stories from African American history and takes its name from a town in Florida where, in November 1920, dozens of African-Americans were murdered in a brutal, racially aggravated attack.

The story centres on an exhausted driver who is pulled over by the police on a lonely road outside Ocoee. As he hears about the terrible history of the town, he also rediscovers a connection with his own past.  McPherson said he was inspired to write “a mishmash of African American reality and history, and Caribbean folklore” because he felt that “there are so many stories in the African Diaspora experience that are not well known and can be told to open others to that experience".

The judge representing the Caribbean region, Saint Lucian poet and novelist Mac Donald Dixon, said the story “traverses genres". “Although not set in the Caribbean, the food, the flavours, the people, narration, appearances and disappearances are all there and happening in a logical sequence that imbues the short story with life. It is palpable; there is nothing incredulous about it,” he said.

Chair of the judges, Pakistani writer and translator Bilal Tanweer, said: “’Ocoee’ forces a reckoning with the challenge that confronts all writers in the postcolonial world: how to write about a world that has been destroyed without any traces. Kwame McPherson takes on the extraordinarily difficult challenge of writing about a past that has left no evidence of its existence. Ocoee’s accomplishment is how it achieves this thorny task with simplicity, humility, and real heart. It is a story that resonates deeply and leaves us with a glimpse of all the ghosts that continue to haunt the present, and, in the process, performs one of the most essential tasks of writing: to bear witness to our condition, and to remind us, again, what it means to be human.”

Dr Anne T Gallagher AO, director-general of the Commonwealth Foundation, the intergovernmental organisation that administers the prize, praised the “beautiful, painful tale; a story that, once again, reminds us of the many and varied histories that have shaped our modern Commonwealth".

McPherson said: “When I began my writing journey, it was not a conscious decision, it was just something I enjoyed doing. Creating and imagining worlds, sharing occurrences and experiences that brought no end of joy in seeing a reader engage and find pleasure in what I have produced. Having the ability to provoke thought, interest or move a reader from one mental and emotional state to the next, is a skill within itself and one I have been blessedly bestowed with and do not take for granted. The culmination of that ability is where I am today, winning a prestigious award, not only for the Caribbean but for the entire Commonwealth. That is no mean feat. I am humbled since I stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, especially those scribes, griots and storytellers of our story, fulfilling a purpose I now live, walk and breathe. I am extremely proud I have represented my many friends, family and, importantly, my country Jamaica, in the way that I have.”

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is free to enter and is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from the Commonwealth. It is the only prize in the world where entries can be submitted in Bengali, Chinese, Creole, French, Greek, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, Tamil, and Turkish as well as English. 

As part of the Commonwealth Foundation’s partnership with The London Library, the winner receives two years’ full membership to the library and the regional winners receive a year’s full membership. 

The 2023 regional winners and their stories  

Africa "The Undertaker’s Apprentice" by Hana Gammon (South Africa) 
Asia "Oceans Away from my Homeland" by Agnes Chew (Singapore) 
Canada and Europe "Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things" by Rue Baldry (United Kingdom) 
Caribbean "Ocoee" by Kwame McPherson (Jamaica) 
Pacific "Kilinochchi" by Himali McInnes (New Zealand)