Credit: Rachel Gladwin
Rue Baldry’s short story ‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ has been shortlisted for The 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from any of the Commonwealth’s 56 Member States. This year’s shortlist of 28 stories were selected from a total of 6,642 entries from 56 Commonwealth countries.
All of the shortlisted titles will be published in the online magazine of the Commonwealth Foundation, adda, and the regional winners in the literary magazine Granta. The regional winners will be announced on the 17th of May, with the overall winner announced on the 27th of June 2023.
Chair of the Judges, Pakistani writer and translator Bilal Tanweer commented, ‘On behalf of the jury, I am thrilled to reveal the shortlist for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. This year's shortlist is a concert of voices from across the Commonwealth, showcasing the richness of its writing traditions, histories, and perspectives. These stories brim with the energy and urgency of the present moment—read them to experience the beat and pulse of contemporary storytelling.
‘These stories perform the essential function of the best fiction: they make us see what we couldn’t see, awaken our sympathies for people we didn’t know, and bring us closer to the world we already inhabit. What we see here are writers, who with their varied styles and strategies, stretch our sense of the real. These stories, like music, go clean through our gut and spine, filling us with sensations ranging from dysphoric anguish to euphoric laughter, and after reading each story, we wake up to the world, changed.’
Dr Anne T. Gallagher AO, Director-General of the Commonwealth Foundation, the intergovernmental organisation which administers the prize, commended all 6,642 citizens of the Commonwealth who entered stories in 2023, offering special congratulations to the 28 writers who made the shortlist in a highly competitive year. Dr Gallagher added: ‘The Foundation is proud of the Short Story Prize: proud of what it reveals of the richness of Commonwealth culture; proud of its reach into all Commonwealth countries; and proud of the role that the prize plays in unearthing and nurturing emerging talent. Working so closely with civil society, we see, every day, the power of storytelling to challenge, to inspire, and to help us make sense of ourselves and the world around us.’
The full shortlist can be seen here.
Rue’s story, ‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ is the story of a young plasterer working on a basement conversion who is lured to the upper floors of the building, where he finds the ‘nice things’ of the title, and commits acts of petty revenge on them.
Her debut novel, DWELL, is a moving coming-of-age and LGBT+ story, exploring themes of trauma, healing and belonging in the aftermath of World War One.
About Rue Baldry
Rue Baldry writes fiction and lives in York. In 2015, she was mentored by Ross Raisin as a Jerwood/ Arvon mentee. In 2017, she was the Bridge Awards/ Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer. Rue has come second in the Yeovil Prize, been shortlisted for the Flash 500 competition and longlisted for the Caledonian, Bridport, First Page and Women’s Prize Discoveries prizes. Twenty-four of her short stories have been published in journals including Ambit, Fairlight Shorts, Mslexia, Crossways, Litro, MIR Online, Postbox, The Incubator, The First Line and The Honest Ulsterman, and shortlisted in the Reader Berlin and Odd Voice Out competitions.
Visit Rue’s website