We are delighted to announce Chanel Sutherland as the overall winner of the 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
Chanel, born in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and living in Montreal, Canada, saw off 7,920 entrants worldwide to take the £5,000 prize. In her powerful winning story, ‘Descend’, enslaved Africans share their life stories as the ship transporting them sinks.
The news was announced at an online award ceremony, presented by Rwandan performing artist and storyteller, Malaika Uwamahoro. The ceremony featured this year’s regional winners: Joshua Lubwama (Uganda, Africa region), Faria Basher (Bangladesh, Asia region), Subraj Singh (Guyana, Caribbean region), and Kathleen Ridgwell (Australia, Pacific region). All five regional winners spoke about their writing and read short extracts from their stories.
In ‘Descend’, as a slave ship sinks, one of the enslaved Africans starts telling a story of the wife he has left behind. In the darkness, others join in. Springing vividly to life, the men and women tell their own stories—of love, family and the worlds from which they had been brutally removed.
The five stories are also available in a special print collection from Paper + Ink.
‘My love for storytelling began before I even fully understood what a story was—I only knew they made me feel something, and I wanted to make others feel it too. Back in Saint Vincent, I used to scrawl my earliest stories into the sand in our yard, knowing they’d be washed away by rain or footsteps. Winning feels deeply affirming—as if that little girl scribbling in the sand was always right to believe that stories mattered.’
‘I took a risk with “Descend”—its shape, its voices—because I believed every enslaved person deserves to have their story told with dignity. I can’t tell all the stories, or restore the lives that were stolen, but I’m humbled that this one resonates.’
– Chanel Sutherland
‘Told in the quiet voice of a seer, “Descend” is deep and profound. It tells the story of slaves packed like sardines in the hull of a sinking ship, an allegory that affirms the unrivalled power of storytelling to set our spirits free and find hope where none exists.’
– Dr Vilsoni Hereniko, Chair, 2025 Judging Panel
