Chanel Sutherland, Canadian Vincentian, wins 2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize
41-year-old Canadian Vincentian writer wins the world’s most global literature prize for ‘Descend’, a story in which enslaved Africans share their life stories, as the ship transporting them sinks
Canadian Vincentian writer Chanel Sutherland has today been announced as the overall winner of the world’s most global literature prize. The 41-year-old, who was born in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and lives in Montreal, Canada, saw off 7,920 entrants worldwide to take the £5,000 prize.
The Commonwealth Foundation announced her win at an online ceremony, presented by Rwandan performing artist and storyteller, Malaika Uwamahoro, in which Chanel and the other four 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 chair of the judges, Dr Vilsoni Hereniko, said, ‘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. My deepest gratitude and congratulations to the judges and the Commonwealth Foundation for shining a light on this masterpiece.’
Dr Anne T. Gallagher AO, Director-General of the Commonwealth Foundation, the intergovernmental organisation that administers the prize, said ‘“Descend” is a superb piece of storytelling—bold in form, precise in detail, and unforgettable in its impact. Sutherland has taken a moment of extreme peril and fashioned a narrative that holds the reader from first line to last. She handles the weight of history with precision and imagination. This is exactly the level of craft and originality the Commonwealth Short Story Prize exists to celebrate. My congratulations to Chanel, to our outstanding regional winners, and to every writer who entered this year’s record-breaking competition.’
Sutherland said, ‘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.’
Describing how she found her voice as a writer, she added, ‘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. We didn’t have the resources for writing as a hobby, but I kept writing anyway, because the stories kept coming. To go from that little girl with fleeting words to now being recognised with such a prestigious and global prize is something I could never have dreamed possible. Winning feels deeply affirming—as if that little girl scribbling in the sand was always right to believe that stories mattered.
‘My deepest gratitude to the Commonwealth Foundation, the judges and to my fellow regional winners Joshua, Faria, Kathleen and Subraj—your stories are extraordinary, and I’m honoured to be in your company. Here’s to the stories that move us, mend us, and remind us we’re not alone—may we keep telling them!’
Sutherland is a Canadian Vincentian writer of fiction and creative nonfiction. Her debut short story collection, Layaway Child, will be published by House of Anansi in 2026. Chanel won the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize and the 2022 CBC Short Story Prize and received the 2022 Mairuth Sarsfield Mentorship. CBC Books named her one of 30 Writers to Watch in 2022.
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, Maltese, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, Tamil, and Turkish as well as English.
