Diana McCaulay, a Jamaican writer, has won the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize from the Caribbean region.
Diana McCaulay defeated the 2019 winner, Alexia Tolas of the Bahamas, and fellow Jamaican Sharma Taylor. She will advance to the final round of judging, with the overall winner being announced on June 21.
‘Bridge over the Yallahs River,’ McCaulay’s winning story, is about the effects of short-term construction work by overseas crews on community life in Jamaica, as illustrated by the difficult choices a father must make between his ability to earn and his daughter’s health.
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Trinidadian novelist Kevin Jared Hosein, the judge representing the Caribbean region, says:
“Bridge over the Yallahs River’ is the story of a storm-struck bridge and the various people tasked to rebuild it. It transports the reader to the small riverside village of Back To. Modern political powers have kept it in a sort of post-colonial Sisyphean stasis. The new bridge seems to be the catalyst for something hopeful. Long-needed repair. As the bridge progresses, the residents and the Chinese construction workers form an unconventional symbiotic bond; only for their actions at the end to announce that more than a physical bridge had been broken. A tale of simultaneous triumph and botchery; loss and reclamation; comedy and tragedy.”
Diana McCaulay says about the story’s background: “I have been an environmental activist for the past 30 years and did some work on the impacts of quarrying on communities near the Yallahs River in Jamaica.’ Describing her win as ‘an absolute thrill’, she adds, ‘I wanted to write about the conflict I saw so frequently during my environmental life; the heavy costs of what we call ‘development’, who pays those costs, the painful choices people must make between their livelihoods and their lives and the many ways in which they fight back.”
An International judging panel chaired by Guyanese writer Fred D’Aguiar chose the story from a shortlist of 26.
Rwandan publisher Louise Umutoni-Bower (Africa), Indian short story writer and novelist Jahnavi Barua (Asia), Cypriot writer and academic Stephanos Stephanides (Canada and Europe), Trinidadian novelist and former Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner Kevin Jared Hosein (Caribbean), Australian Wiradjuri writer, poet, and academic Jeanine Leane (Australia) are the other panelists.
The Commonwealth Foundation administers the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, which is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from any of the Commonwealth’s 54 member countries.
It is the most accessible and international writing competition, with entries accepted in Bengali, Chinese, Creole, French, Greek, Malay, Portuguese, Samoan, Swahili, Tamil, and Turkish in addition to English.
