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To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and mark this year’s Commonwealth Games celebrations, three recent prize winners have written specially commissioned stories for Radio 4.

Today’s story is by Kanya D’Almeida, from Sri Lanka, who won the 2021 prize with I Cleaned the …. . Her new story, Indecent Exposure, is a quietly searing tale of motherhood, poverty and longing. A young woman finds herself in court and knows that the forces ranged against her will never understand or pardon the desperate need that brought her there.

Kanya D’Almeida has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University’s School for the Arts. She is writing a collection of short stories about women and mental health, and is the host of The Darkest Light, a podcast on birth and motherhood in Sri Lanka.

The Commonwealth Short Story Prize attracts between 6,000 – 7,000 entries every year from nearly all the 54 Commonwealth countries, and taps into a rich, rewarding vein of storytelling from around the world. Five regional prizes are awarded from which one writer is chosen as the overall winner.

Producer: Sara Davies
Sound Design: Lucinda Mason Brown
A Pier production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4