Comma Press and the University of Central Lancashire are proud to host the annual Dinesh Allirajah Prize for Short Fiction.
Dinesh Allirajah (1967-2014) once said of himself (referencing a Sonny Criss sleeve note): 'I am a jazz writer, which is a full-time creative job'. Dinesh had many other occupations, too - lecturing in creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Central Lancashire and Edge Hill, running workshops and literacy classes in community centres, schools and prisons, acting as Chair of the National Black Arts Alliance and the National Association for Literature Development, as well as being a long-term director of Comma Press. He was also a DJ, playwright, radio presenter, cricket enthusiast and blogger. His short stories were featured in numerous anthologies and magazines, and first collected in A Manner of Speaking (Spike Books, 2004). Scent is the first comprehensive collection of his work, published by Comma Press following his sudden passing in December 2014.

Dinesh was a Founding Board Member and Director of Comma (2007-2012), and also lectured in Creative Writing at UCLan for 8 years and was much-loved by everyone he worked with. Amongst these many other things, first and foremost, he was a writer, and he loved to write short fiction, which he posted regularly on his blog (Real Time Short Stories). Comma in partnership with the University of Central Lancashire, have set up this prize, in his name, as part of a lasting legacy of his love of writing short fiction.

The theme for the inaugural year (2018) was 'Café Stories', in honour of Dinesh's Café Shorts series which he posted on his blog. He believed cafes to be "fertile ground for the short story." In his own words, he said "The reason a café setting works is because we understand what goes on there, without the gauze of a local or historical context."

The prize is free and open to anyone 18 years or over who is a resident of the UK, for a single story which must not have been published anywhere else, online or in print. It is free to submit your entry, but only one per writer please. All entries were made anonymous upon receipt to ensure the shortlist is chosen entirely on the quality of the story.

The shortlist was chosen with the help of UCLan creative writing students, who then handed it over to our panel of judges for 2018, which included Dr. Naomi Kruger (Lecturer in Creative Writing at UCLan), Claire Dean (author of multiple short stories for Comma, debut collection published by Papaveria in 2017), Abdulrazak Gurnah (novelist and lecturer at University of Kent) and Inua Ellams (poet, performer, playwright, graphic artist and designer).

Featuring all ten shortlisted stories, including the winning story, 'Bakhur' by Lucas Stewart, and stories by runners-up Stephen Hargadon and Selma Carvalho.

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