The Salam Award

Introduction:

The inaugural Salam Writers Workshop was held in March 2023 in Lahore, Pakistan. Hosted by The Salam Award and the Mushtaq Ahmad Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences (MGSHSS), the residential workshop took place from March 6th to March 10th, 2023, at LUMS in Lahore, Pakistan. A cohort of 14 participants were selected from across the country. Award-winning authors Elizabeth Hand and Mary Anne Mohanraj joined the event as lead instructors.

Participants:

Sadia Khatri

Jawziya Zaman

Akbar Shahzad

Umair Khan

Ayesha Channa

Mushba Said

Zahra Mukhi

Risham Chaudhry

Marium Asif

Rida Altaf

Zunaira Nadeem

Noor Us Sabah Tauqeer

Hamza Sarfraz

Sayed Murtaza Mohsin

Elizabeth Hand:

Elizabeth Hand is the author of twenty genre-spanning novels and five collections of short fiction and essays. Her work has received multiple Shirley Jackson, World Fantasy and Nebula Awards, among other honors, and have been chosen as Notable Books by the New York Times and Washington Post. She is a longtime reviewer for the Washington Post Book World, and has written for numerous publications, including the L.A. Times, Salon, the Boston Review, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Much of her work focuses on artists and performers, particularly those outside the mainstream, as well as on the impacts of climate change. She is on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing, and for over thirty years has led myriad writing workshops, including Clarion West, Clarion, Odyssey, the Yale Writer’s Conference, Pike’s Peak Writer’s Conference, The Writer’s Hotel, and recently, the debut Salam Writer’s Workshop in Lahore, Pakistan and a futurist workshop at Wytham Abbey, Oxford, UK.

Mary Anne Moharanj:

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of A Feast of Serendib (forthcoming 2020, Mascot Books), Bodies in Motion (HarperCollins), The Stars Change (Circlet Press), and twelve other titles. Bodies in Motion was a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards, a USA Today Notable Book, and has been translated into six languages. The Stars Change was a finalist for the Lambda, Rainbow, and Bisexual Book Awards. She’s recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Prose, has received a Locus Award and a Breaking Barriers Award from the Chicago Foundation for Women, and has been Guest of Honor at numerous conventions.