Shahnaz Bashir

Shahnaz Bashir is a Kashmiri novelist and academic from Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.^[1]

Bashir in 2024

Education and work

Shahnaz Bashir is a doctoral fellow and teaching associate in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass).^[2] He teaches "Writing As Communication" and "Public Speaking", and has been awarded several "Letters of Commendation" for "excellent pedagogy" by the Directorate of Graduate Programs at the Department of Communication at UMass. From 2021 to 2024, he has been consecutively a finalist for the Distinguished Teaching Award in the Graduate Teaching Associate category at the university. He was also awarded the Research Enhancement and Leadership (REAL) Fellowship by UMass.^[3]

Before coming to UMass, he taught narrative journalism and conflict reportage at the Central University of Kashmir.^[4]

Kashmir Life, in its Jan 2016 year-ender special issue, declared Shahnaz as "one of the eleven impact-makers from the entire population of Jammu & Kashmir".^[5]

He is the South Asia juror for the True Story Award, the first-ever global journalism prize instituted in Bern, Switzerland.^[6]

Critical acclaim

His debut novel The Half Mother (Hachette, 2014) won the Muse India Young Writer Award 2015.^[7] The book has been translated into several Indian languages and French as La Mère Orpheline,^[8][9][10] becoming the first-ever novel from Kashmir to be translated into a foreign (European) language.

Shahnaz Bashir's second book Scattered Souls (HarperCollins, 2016) was longlisted for "Tata Lit Live Award 2017" for Best Book - Fiction. It was conferred with The Citizen's "Talent of the Year Award 2017".^[11] In April 2018, Kashmir Observer reported "Scattered Souls is the best-selling fiction book in Kashmir till date... Its sales [in the bookstores of Srinagar] have surpassed the other fiction titles by Kashmiri writers writing in English".^[12] His works of fiction have been compared with Saadat Hasan Manto and Anton Chekov.^[13] The Asian Age observed: "There are easy comparisons with Manto in the often-shocking glibness with which Bashir lays bare a character's innermost feelings, or with Chekov in the rootedness of the characters to their circumstances."^[13]

In 2017, Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council awarded him a writer's research residency at Winterthur, Switzerland.^[14]

Books

• The Half Mother (Hachette, 2014),^[15]
• Scattered Souls (HarperCollins, 2016),^[16]
• The Disease forthcoming...^{[citation needed]}

Book chapters

• Cinema Palladium, Nachbilder: Eine Foto Text Anthologie (Spector Books via Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and Fotomuseum Winterthur 2021),^[17]
• The Gravestone, A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces (Aleph Book Company 2016),^[18]

Awards

• Emerging Scholar Award 2024, by Common Ground Research Network, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA^[19]
• Research Enhancement and Leadership (REAL) Fellowship (2021-2024), awarded by the University of Massachusetts Amherst^[20]
• 2023 Winter Non-Working Fellowship, awarded by the Directorate of Graduate Studies, Department of Communication, UMass Amherst^[21]
• Pro-Helvetia Swiss Arts Council Writer's Residency Award 2018^[22]
• The Citizen's Talent of the Year Award 2016-17^{[citation needed]}
• Scattered Souls Longlisted for Tata Lit Live Award Best Book Fiction 2017^{[citation needed]}
• Winner of Muse India Young Writer Award 2015 for The Half Mother^{[citation needed]}
• Shamim Ahmad Shamim Memorial-Kashmir Times Award 2007^{[citation needed]}
• University Gold Medal and Award of Merit for top grade rank in graduate media studies, class of 2004-2006^{[citation needed]}