The winner of this year’s Zeenat Haroon Rashid (ZHR) Writing Prize for Women is Alia Ahmed for her short story titled ‘Najma’.

The prize, which alternates between fiction and non-fiction each year, is open to women of Pakistani origin aged 18 and above and has a cash award of Rs100,000. It was established in 2019 and is now in it’s third year.

Over 250 entries were received and judged by a panel including novelists Kamila Shamsie and Hanif Kureishi, academic Maryam Wasif Khan and book editors Faiza S. Khan and Shan Vahidy.

Winner Ahmed is a journalist and editor whose work has appeared in Herald, Dawn, and the New York-based literary quarterly The Hudson Review.

Her story, ‘Najma’, is “an urban tragedy about an unlikely friendship between a wealthy, apathetic young woman and her seemingly self-assured driving instructor.” Displaying “first-rate writing skills”, it’s most striking accomplishment is the “unlikable voice of the narrator successfully evoking the casual callousness of privilege.”

The shortlisted entries include ‘Covers’ by Natasha Japanwala, ‘Dandelion Bloom’ by Zehra Nabi, ‘Growing Babies in Big Houses’ by Alizah Hashmi, ‘My Husband’s Mistress’ by Zofishan Umair and ‘The Woman Who Listened to Everybody’ by Sarah Abdullah.

‘Najma’ will be published in Eos and, along with the shortlisted stories, can be read on the official prize website www.zhrwritingprize.com.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, November 14th, 2021