Trinidadian writer Sharon Millar is co-winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The announcement was made at an event at the Hay Festival this evening, where Sharon and fellow winner Eliza Robertson of Canada were presented with the prize by celebrated author John le Carré. Sharon’s short story “The Whale House” — published this week in Granta online — was previously chosen by the prize judges as the winner for the Caribbean region.
Sharon was recently shortlisted for the 2013 Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize, sponsored by the Hollick Family Charitable Trust and Arvon, in association with the Bocas Lit Fest. She was also a New Talent Showcase author at the 2012 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.
Chaired by BBC journalist Razia Iqbal, the Commonwealth Short Story judging panel included literary agent Elise Dillsworth, a fiction judge for the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize, and writer Oonya Kempadoo, a 2013 NGC Bocas Lit Fest author.
In a statement on behalf of the judges, Iqbal said: “It is a measure of the quality we had to choose from in the shortlist, that we unanimously settled on two joint winners. It was impossible to decide between them, though each one is quite distinctly different from the other. Both fulfilled our criteria of excellence in style, originality and tone…. Both these stories stay in the imagination and the heart, long after they have been read.”
The Bocas team send our congratulations to Sharon, and good wishes for future literary success!