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The Odds Are In Winner Announced: AKALA AKA
The Odds Are In began as a flash fiction challenge about prediction, risk and uncertainty. It now becomes a live literary conversation about how writers respond to a world increasingly shaped by probabilities, systems and prediction.
From over 200 anonymous submissions, five stories were shortlisted. We’re pleased to announce that AKALA AKA by Anselm Eme is the winner of The Odds Are In.
Winner announced
AKALA AKA stood out for the confidence of its imagined world and the precision with which it turns prediction into a social system – one that reaches from loans and marriage to illness, governance and belief.
Set in the town of Kijani, where daily probabilities shape ordinary life, the story gathers real pressure through Amina’s private crisis and the town’s public dependence on numbers, before opening into a larger question: what remains when certainty fails and people are forced to act without permission from the system.
From page to room
The winning story sits inside a wider frame. The shortlist remains live, the public vote has carried the challenge beyond the page, and the conversation now continues into Future Archives London on 28 May.
In that sense, The Odds Are In is no longer only a competition. It is part of Litro’s wider editorial project: bringing fiction, live discussion, reading communities and writer development into the same space.
Read the winning story
Winning author
Anselm Eme
Revisit the shortlist
The full shortlist remains live here: The Odds Are In – Shortlist
Join us live on 28 May
The competition continues into Future Archives London on 28 May, with shortlisted writers featured as part of a live evening of readings and discussion.
Take the next step
If this challenge has made you think differently about short fiction, Litro’s Short Work Revision & Submission Sprint is designed to help writers strengthen a draft and move it closer to publication.