Association Burkinabè de Fundraising

Entries are now open for the AKO Caine Prize for African Writing, which aims to bring African writing to a wider audience through the annual literary prize.

As well as administering the Prize, they help emerging writers in Africa to enter the world of mainstream publishing.

Their jury will read, deliberate and shortlist five stories from the eligible entries. The shortlisted writers will be invited to London to take part in a series of events, including:

• Private lunch with agents, editors, publishers and publicists
• Public readings and round tables
• Interviews with the press and media, and
• Invitation to the 2023 awards ceremony where the winner will be announced.

Benefits

• The winner will receive a cash prize of £10,000 and four shortlisted writers will receive £500 each.

Eligibility criteria

• The story must have been published in the five years prior to the submission deadline. For 2023 eligibility, judges will only consider work published between 1 February 2018 and 25 January 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 websites focusing on the literary arts.
• Authors 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• Self-published and unpublished works are not eligible.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 several short stories as long as they do not submit more than one story by the same author.
• Stories can only be submitted for the AKO Caine Award once. Unfortunately, this means that you cannot resubmit a story for consideration, even if it has not been shortlisted.
• Ineligible genres include: children's stories, factual writing, academic essays, plays, poetry and autobiography/biography.
• Submissions must specify which African country the author comes from and the number of words in the short story.

Who can submit stories for the Prize?

• Entries must be submitted by the publisher or a third-party institution independent of the author.
• Publishers of physical and digital literary journals, magazines or websites focusing on literature can submit entries for the Prize.
• Self-published and unpublished works are not eligible for the Prize.
• Short stories submitted by the author(s) will not be eligible for the Prize.

Pre-selection and expectations

• The winner and shortlisted writers will be invited to attend events in Africa, London and elsewhere as resources and circumstances permit. In these cases, a travel grant will be awarded to each of the shortlisted candidates.
• By submitting an entry to the AKO Caine Prize, the publisher and author give non-exclusive, non-commercial permission in perpetuity for the Prize to reproduce the story in the AKO Caine Prize anthology in print, digital and audio format if the story is shortlisted.
• By agreeing to have their stories submitted for the Prize, shortlisted writers agree to participate in AKO Caine Prize events, including, but not limited to, in-person and online panel discussions, interviews, readings, podcast recordings and the final awards ceremony.
• The prize will provide a separate letter detailing the conditions of agreement to the shortlisted writers.

For more information, please visitAKO.