The final selection for this year's Commonwealth Short Story Competition was made by an international panel of judges:
Sharmini Boyle
Sharmini Boyle started her television career as a producer of the state owned SLRC/ITN in 1980. Three years later she established Precision Productions, specialising in development communication and the production of documentary and other factual videos for a diverse range of clients. Since 1995 she has been the Chief Editor at Young Asia Television, an organisation that specializes in social communication, producing television programmes on issues of social justice, sustainable development and conflict resolution.
Frances Fortune
Frances Fortune is Africa Director for Search for the Common Ground (SFCG). A specialist in conflict transformation strategy and activities, with a particular focus on outreach and media, Ms Fortune currently oversees and directs SFCG’s program in sub-Saharan Africa, coordinating and contributing to the development of the strategies in fourteen countries programmes where SFCG has offices. Using the radio, video, culture and traditional forms of the media, SFCG seeks to support countries to handle conflicts peacefully. Recently Ms Fortune has spent six years as Chair of the civil society coalition of domestic observers in Sierra Leone called the National Elections Watch (NEW). As a former director of Talking Drum Studio, she led the development of the Independent Radio Network (IRN) as well as overseeing the growth of the SFCG program across the country. She is an active campaigner for positive change for women and affirmative action.
Jolisa Gracewood
Jolisa Gracewood is a New Zealand writer, editor, and reviewer based in New Haven, Connecticut. She edits fiction and non-fiction, and reviews regularly for the New Zealand Listener, and has won awards for her book reviews, including Reviewer of the Year at the New Zealand Book Awards (2006). She has also published academic articles, literary anthologies for learners of Japanese, and literary translations; her short story Dead Letters was made into a short film that has screened at international film festivals. She holds an MA in Japanese Literature from the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University (USA), and has taught non-fiction writing at Yale University.
Nicholas Laughlin
Nicholas Laughlin is the editor of The Caribbean Review of Books (www.caribbeanreviewofbooks.com), one of the organisers of Bocas Literary Festival (www.bocaslitfest.com) and a writer with a particular interest in Caribbean literature, art and culture. His reviews, essays, and poems have appeared in a number of journals and books. He is also a director of Alice Yard, a contemporary arts space and collaborative based in Port of Spain. He was born and has always lived in Trinidad.
Kachi Ozumba
Kachi A. Ozumba is a regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and a winner of the Arts Council England’s Decibel Penguin Prize. His short stories have been published and broadcast widely. His debut novel, The Shadow of a Smile (Alma Books 2009), was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He holds an MA (with distinction) in Creative Writing, and has been awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship to work on his next novel.