4th Estate and The Guardian are thrilled to announce the shortlist for the 2025 4thWrite Prize, a competition open to Black, Asian and minority ethnic writers living in the UK or Ireland. Please see the shortlist below alongside a summary of each story and a biography of each writer.
ALLAH MUST BE A BLACK BOY by Nana Kwesi Boateng
Allah Must Be a Black Boy follows the gripping story of a fourteen-year-old boy from his war-torn West African village to an uncertain life in England. When civil war ravages his homeland, claiming the lives of his mother and five brothers, the boy, unnamed, must find a new home. With a promise of a new life in Europe, he must cross the treacherous deserts of Agadez, confront betrayal and endure a protracted struggle for freedom. Yet, freedom proves to be an elusive dream. In England, a different kind of battle awaits – one that will test his resilience and spirit. This is a haunting tale of migration, poverty, displacement and an unyielding search for hope.
Nana Kwesi Boateng is a Nigerian-born Ghanaian writer based in the United Kingdom. His works explore themes of African life, culture and identity. Drawing inspiration from lived experiences and the untold stories of West Africa, he crafts narratives that give voice to the displaced and the marginalised. His works have appeared in the ECA Anthology of African Writers and the ALPC Anthology of Short Stories on Land in Africa and was shortlisted for the Young Africans in Creative Writing Anthology.
Find him on Instagram: @iamkwesiboateng
WE’VE DEFROSTED ABRAHAM LINCOLN by Monica Davis
Los Angeles is sliding into the Pacific Ocean, but insiders got word many months prior, setting up underground bunkers in Montana. Jennifer, a PR agent to the President, has just settled into ‘mole life’ when she gets a call from the Commander-in-Chief to distract the country until he gets his family underground. In his place, he has found the only man beloved enough to unify America once more – the only President so cherished that he can distract the world while US leadership scurries away. That man is Abraham Lincoln. Luckily, Abe is up for the task despite being dead for 160 years. With Jen’s help, the current President flees while Abe gets caught up in the wonders of Instagram. In the end, he dazzles the country with a rare four-host late night show appearance and Jen gets back to her husband and stepson. But danger awaits her and she soon realises that she will have to embrace violence to survive.
Monica Davis is a writer and actor from Los Angeles living in Edinburgh. Her writing has appeared in Litro Magazine and From Arthur’s Seat. Her non-fiction work won the Michael Pedersen Open Mic Contest in 2024, and she hosted a poetry conversation with Len Pennie at the Push the Boat Out Festival in November of the same year. She is currently working on a spy novel she describes as ‘The Da Vinci Code for people who listen to Cardi B’.
Find her on Instagram: @monicalorandavis
GORGEOUS by Yasmina Floyer
The narrative follows a woman preparing for an online date as she attempts to find a connection that will fill the void of longing created in her childhood. We are given an insight into the experiences that lead to her to follow her yearning and desire as well as the unlikely way in which she finds relief.
Yasmina Floyer is a freelance writer based in London. She is a regular contributor for Psychologies magazine and her features can be found online and in print in titles including the Observer Magazine, The Telegraph, the Guardian, Cosmopolitan and DAZED magazine. Her fiction is published in literary magazines including Extra Teeth, Shooter Literary Magazine and Litro Magazine, as well as in books such as Spiritus Mundi (Liminal 11) and 24 Stories (Unbound). Her essays can be found in Cunning Folk magazine and her art essays are published by Anomie Publishing.
Find her on Instagram: @yasminafloyer
ONE THOUSAND DEMONS by Jacqueline-Faith Ísọ́lá
In One Thousand Demons, Ìrètí, as usual, hopes to please her mother-in-law, Nigella, by accompanying her to a prosperity gospel church in contemporary Lagos. However, when the self-proclaimed prophet commands Ìrètí to exchange a sentimental gift from her husband for what he claims is a superior prophecy, her identity as a submissive woman suddenly shifts. This abrupt transformation draws her into a perilous and unforgettable scandal.
Jacqueline-Faith Ísọ́lá is a writer and private tutor. She graduated from Goldsmiths, University of London, with a BA in Anthropology and earned an MSc in Globalisation from University College London. Longlisted for the 4thWrite Prize 2025, she is the author of the short story One Thousand Demons. She also served as a copy editor for ‘The New Voice of Home’, a play by Anthonette Isioma, which premiered at the Talawa Theatre in 2013. On rare occasions, when she is not editing her first work of literary fiction, she publishes columns and experimental stories on her Medium page, primarily focusing on culture, food, family, class and Africa.
Find her on TikTok @jacquelinefisola
THE ORIGINAL IS NOT HERE by Piyumi Kapugeekiyana
The Original Is Not Here follows Charitha, a Sri Lankan museum curator whose obsession with repatriating a statue of the goddess Tārā drives her to stage a provocative new exhibit. Her actions spark conversation but also trigger backlash, forcing her to confront uncomfortable truths about her own blind spots. Set against the backdrop of a fraying marriage – where the personal is always political – the story explores the tensions of cultural ownership, the fragility of ambition and what happens when good intentions fall short.
Piyumi Kapugeekiyana is a Sri Lankan writer based in London and the 2024–25 recipient of the City Lit Malorie Blackman Scholarship for Unheard Voices. Her fiction has been longlisted and shortlisted by the Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, WOW! Women on Writing and Cranked Anvil Press and appears in the Flashy Gifts anthology. She was also a finalist for the 2018 Bracken Bower Prize, awarded for the best business book proposal by a writer under 35. Piyumi holds a PhD in International Relations and a BA in International Business.
Find her on X: @Piyumi_K
MIRA by Linda Helen Yu
At nineteen, Mira’s life is a sequence of small rooms – her bedroom, the local grocery store stockroom, the inside of her mind. The days stretch and blur until she finds herself staring too long into mirrors, into the faces of strangers, into the spaces between what is real and what could be. Mira is a portrait of hunger – not for food, but for beauty, for attention, for the kind of recognition that feels like salvation. But the pursuit has a cost, and it asks her to give more than she knew she had. Mira is a story about obsession disguised as aspiration, and the way longing can make a person disappear.
Linda Helen Yu is a Chinese-American writer, actress, and activist currently based in the United Kingdom. Born in Louisiana and raised in California, she studied Art History and Philosophy at New York University before pursuing acting, training at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute. She is as much a student of the world as she is of literature. She enjoys gardening, sketching, people watching, and photographing strangers. Her favourite writers are Dostoyevsky and Anaïs Nin; her most cherished book, Marguerite Duras’s The Lover. Her favourite city is Paris, where she learned the value of walking everywhere and lingering in cafés for hours. She maintains that most of life’s problems can be solved by reading more books – or at least by pretending you have.
Find her on Instagram: @lindahelenyu, @lindahelenyuart
Congratulations to all our shortlisted writers! The winner will be announced on October 1st at a prize ceremony in London.
Our judges this year are: Caleb Femi, writer, director and photographer, Jazmin Sawyers, Olympian, sports commentator and presenter, Monica MacSwan, Associate Agent at Aitken Alexander, Kishani Widyaratna, Publisher at 4th Estate and Lucy Knight, Commissioning Editor at The Guardian. We are especially thrilled to announce that bestselling author Candice Carty-Williams will also joining the judging panel this year – an extra special addition as Candice is the founder of the Prize, which she created and launched during her time working at 4th Estate.
If you have any questions, please email 4thWritePrize@harpercollins.co.uk and someone will get back to you.
