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Winner of 2022 Zeenat haroon rashid Writing Prize
Now in its fourth year, the Zeenat Haroon Rashid (ZHR) Writing Prize for Women is awarded to Saira Mahmood for her non-fiction essay ‘A Pakistani Woman Comes of Age’. The contest’s judges have stated that this “compelling memoir, which articulates a girl’s journey to womanhood through the coming of age of social media in Pakistan, [is] original thinking at its best: bursting with freshness and ambition.”
Mahmood is a graduate student at the Department of English at the University of Karachi, where her current research and writing interests include gender, media and Muslim womanhood. She was previously a staff writer at the online magazine, The Tempest.
Established in 2019, the ZHR Prize is open to women of Pakistani origin aged 18 and above and alternates between fiction and non-fiction each year. Last year’s winner was Alia Ahmed for her short story titled ‘Najma’.
Winners of the competition receive a cash prize of Rs 100,000 and their essay or short story is featured in Eos magazine.
The panel of judges for 2022 included author Carla Power, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; Arifa Akbar, author and correspondent for The Guardian; Saeed Shah, Pulitzer Prize nominated correspondent for The Wall Street Journal; Wajiha Hyder, literary editor at The News on Sunday; and freelance editor Shan Vahidy.
Essays that made the shortlist include ‘A Seat at Bibi’s Dining Table’ by Laila Ghaffar; ‘Empire of Illusion’ by Aisha Chapra; ‘Fridge Magnets’ by Sundus Saleemi; ‘Of Bras and Breasts’ by Areej Akhtar; and ‘The Silence of the Demented’ by Michelle Nadeem.
The winning and shortlisted essays will be available to read on the Prize’s website
Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, November 6th, 2022