Photo credit: Rachel Gladwin
Rue Baldry’s short story ‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ has won the Canada and Europe regional category in the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
The Commonwealth Short Story Prize is awarded annually for the best piece of unpublished short fiction from any of the Commonwealth’s 56 Member States, with regional winners each receiving £2,500 in prize money as well as publication in Granta Magazine, while the overall winner wins £5,000. This year there were a total of 6,642 entries from 56 Commonwealth countries, with 28 writers from 19 different Commonwealth countries making the final shortlists.
The overall winner is selected from the list of regional winners, and will be revealed on the 27th June 2023. The other 2023 category winners are: ‘The Undertaker's Apprentice’ by Hana Gammon (Africa), ‘Oceans Away from my Homeland’ by Agnes Chew (Asian),‘Ocoee’ by Kwame McPherson (Caribbean), and ‘Kilinochchi’ by Himali McInnes (Pacific).
Rue’s story, ‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ is the story of a young plasterer working on a basement conversion who is lured to the upper floors of the building, where he finds the ‘nice things’ of the title, and commits acts of petty revenge on them.
The story began, Baldry says, during the spring of 2020, during the first UK pandemic lockdown and the Black Lives Matter protests. She says, ‘The neighbours on both sides of our terraced house were having major building work done. Unable to write, I started to think about the experiences of workers in the building trade, and other working-class jobs, who were being disproportionately exposed to the virus. At the same time I was reading a lot of posts about the subtle (as well as blatant) racisms experienced by People of Colour in the UK, which reminded me of experiences of friends.’
Katrina Best, the judge representing the Canada and Europe region, said that ‘Lech, Prince, and the Nice Things’ is ‘a genuinely surprising and unexpectedly moving story that explores such weighty – and timely – topics as racism, classism and inequality in modern-day Britain, yet is never heavy-handed thanks to the writer’s comedic sensibility and talent for observing the minutiae of everyday life. The writer’s considerable skill is evident in every element of this story, including deft observations, evocative descriptions, fully realised, complex and sympathetic characters, believable dialogue, and an expertly crafted narrative that is infused throughout with wry humour.’
On the judging process, chair of the judges Bilal Tanweer said that ‘it was both an agony and a pleasure to choose the overall winner from each region. All of the winning stories demonstrated impressive ambition and deep love for storytelling, combined with an intimate understanding of place and a real mastery of the craft. The judges were unanimous in their admiration of these stories and how they sought to tackle difficult metaphysical and historical questions.’
Rue’s debut novel, DWELL, is a moving coming-of-age and LGBT+ story, exploring themes of trauma, healing and belonging in the aftermath of World War One.
About Rue Baldry
Rue Baldry writes fiction and lives in York. In 2015, she was mentored by Ross Raisin as a Jerwood/ Arvon mentee. In 2017, she was the Bridge Awards/ Moniack Mhor Emerging Writer. Rue has come second in the Yeovil Prize, been shortlisted for the Flash 500 competition and longlisted for the Caledonian, Bridport, First Page and Women’s Prize Discoveries prizes. Twenty-four of her short stories have been published in journals including Ambit, Fairlight Shorts, Mslexia, Crossways, Litro, MIR Online, Postbox, The Incubator, The First Line and The Honest Ulsterman, and shortlisted in the Reader Berlin and Odd Voice Out competitions.
Visit Rue’s website