The Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing Prize for Women is pleased and proud to announce that the Award for 2023 goes to writer Sana Mohsin for her short story RABBITS. Sana will receive a cash award of Rs.100,000.
This year the prize was awarded for fiction and was chosen by a judging panel that included award-winning and award-nominated novelists Mohammed Hanif, Shandana Minhas and Aamina Ahmed, the former lite
rary editor at DAWN Sarwat Yasmeen Azeem, and freelance editor Shan Vahidy.
The judges agreed that RABBITS was a sharp, surrealist story which used a powerful central image to articulate the power dynamics within a household, making the mundane into something much more menacing and unexpected.
The winning author Sana Mohsin is a writer and researcher based in Lahore. Having recently completed studies in English Literature at universities in Canada, her writing has appeared in various Canadian literary publications and her debut poetry collection, Grief Grows Elsewhere, was published in 2022. In a very competiti
ve year, the judges also Highly Commended five other shortlisted stories for their literary merit:
* A POT OF DAAL by Maria Khan. An evocative account of mother-daughte
r relationships told through a recipe for daal.
* KHAZINA by Amna Chaudhry. A husband’s second marriage creates heartbreak but also new opportunities for an abandoned wife.
* MALIK AND KHADIJA WAIT by Saher Hasnain. A poigna
nt yet quietly humorous story about grief and loss and getting on with the everyday business of survival.
* MOTHER IN THE JAMUN TREE by Samia Altaf. Seeking escape from the existential miseries of life, one woman finds a novel solution.
* THE LONG WAY ROUND by Ayesha Malik. An original piece using magical realism and humour to examine an unexpected man
ifestation of “fiends of the mind”.
The winning submission will be published in a national newspaper, both online and in print in November, and shortly thereafter, all shortlisted submissions will be published on the official prize website www.zhrwritingprize.com
Throughout the coming months, some of the longlisted entries will also be published on the website.
