20-6-16
Syed Haider Shahbaz has been selected as the 2016/17 Charles Pick South Asia Writing Fellow at UEA. The fellowship is worth £26,000 and lasts for six months. It is dedicated to the memory of the publisher and literary agent, Charles Pick, and is intended to support the work of a new and as yet unpublished writer of fictional or non-fictional prose. Previous recipients of the fellowship include Luke Williams, Brian Chikwava, Erin Soros, Will Boast and Megan Bradbury. Syed is a Pakistani writer and translator, and has a BA from Yale University and an MFA from University of Nevada. His creative work has appeared in Brooklyn Rail, Portland Review, Aldus, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Enizagam Fiction Contest 2015, and has contributed reviews to the Los Angeles Review of Books, Jadaliyya, Himal SouthAsian, The Believer Logger, and Tanqeed. His work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and he has received grants and residencies from NYS Summer Writers Institute, Black Mountain Institute, and The Hambidge Center.