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Kritika Pandey wins the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her short story, “The Great Indian Tee and Snakes” is about two young people trying to solve the age-old riddle of human existence: how does one love in the era of hatred and prejudice?

A 2020 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s MFA for Poets and Writers, Pandey is a Pushcart-nominated Indian writer whose work is forthcoming or has appeared in Guernica, The Common, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Raleigh Review, and UCity Review, among others. She won the Harvey Swados Fiction Prize, the Cara Parravani Memorial Award from UMass, and the Charles Wallace Scholarship for Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. She is a recipient of a 2020 grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation.

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded for the best piece of unpublished short fiction (2,000–5,000 words) in English. Each year the judges select five winning writers who share a total prize money of £15,000. The overall winner receives £5,000, one of the highest amounts for an international prize for unpublished short stories. Regional winners each receive £2,500. In addition to this cash prize, Regional Winners also have their stories published in Granta.

Read "The Great Indian Tee and Snakes" in Granta

Watch Pandey talk about her story

Watch The Commonwealth Short Story Prize Award Ceremony (Pandey’s story is introduced at 16:13 timestamp. Winner announced at the 28:47 timestamp.)

Contact: 
Jennifer Jacobson, jenniferj@hfa.umass.edu
Shiera D. Goff, sdgoff@umass.edu