Jamaican storyteller and writer, Kwame McPherson, is the regional winner of the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He is among four others from the Pacific region, Africa, Canada and Europe, and Asia who were chosen out of 6,642 entrants.

His winning story, ‘Ocoee’, has been described by the Commonwealth Foundation as “an interweaving of African American reality and history, and Caribbean folklore.”

Competition judges praised his story as “a simple tale retold in a surreal atmosphere of creative uneasiness. Images awake in the subconscious and, without pointing fingers, remind us of man’s inhumanity to man.”

When asked about what made him write the story, McPherson said, “I was inspired to do a mishmash of African American reality, history, and Caribbean folklore, because I feel that there are so many stories in the African Diaspora experience that are not well known and can be told to open others to that experience. For instance, Ocoee was a real town in Florida where, in November 1920, numerous African Americans were massacred by a white mob. I also sought to show the Caribbean connection by touching on a supernatural folklore, played out in the story.”

Additionally, in his shortlisted video, McPherson explained that, “Ocoee is a Cherokee Native American Indian name which, when Anglicised, means “apricot vine place”. My story is based on African diaspora history and realities. In this case, it’s an African American reality mixed with Jamaican folklore, the supernatural and sci-fi. I chose to submit my story to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2023 because I’ve done it before, a number of times but this is the furthest I’ve ever reached.”

“I am still in a state of shock, it’s surreal, but I’m grateful, and I live in gratitude because I was selected. I’m just blown away. Stories make up our lives. We are stories. They say our lives are books, which have their own chapters. Everyone around us has stories, everything is a story, has a story, has its place and I’m fortunate enough to be a storyteller to tell these stories in the way that I do – engaging, provoking, enabling discussions and debates,” he said.

“I’m grateful that I’m able to be a storyteller in this time to tell the stories that many people don’t actually hear about, especially with focus on the African diaspora. It’s the richness and the wealth of stories that exist within the African diaspora in itself,” he added.

McPherson is quoted on the Commonwealth Foundation’s website as saying that, “Stories make up the tapestry of our everyday lives. They are created, nurtured, displayed and demonstrated on television, social media, our phones, in movies and newspapers, and, importantly, in our own minds. They manifest in how individuals, families, communities and the wider society interact and relate. And then, like a pot of delicious manish water soup, they are mixed into the entire world’s own story to be read, uplifted and absorbed. When used in the right way, stories can make our lives richer-those ones gone before and those yet to come.”

The Caribbean region’s winner is a past student at London Metropolitan University and University of Westminster and a 2007 Poetic Soul winner. He was the first Jamaican Flash Fiction Bursary Awardee for The Bridport Prize: International Creative Writing Competition in 2020. He is also a recent and successful contributor to Flame Tree Publishing’s (UK) diverse-writing anthologies and a contributor to ‘The Heart of a Black Man’ anthology to be published in Los Angeles. It tells personal, inspiring, uplifting, and empowering stories from influential and powerful Black men.

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