Shahnaz Bashir

Shahnaz Bashir is a Kashmiri novelist and academic from Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir.

Education and work
Shahnaz Bashir is a doctoral fellow and teaching associate in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass). He teaches "Writing As Communication" and "Public Speaking", and has been awarded a commendation for "excellent pedagogy" by the Directorate of Graduate Programs at the Department of Communication at UMass. Earlier in 2021 and 2022, he was consecutively twice a finalist for Distinguished Teaching Award in the Grad Teaching Associate category at the university. He was also awarded the Research Enhancement and Leadership (REAL) Fellowship by UMass.

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

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".

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

Critical acclaim
His debut novel The Half Mother (Hachette, 2014) won the Muse India Young Writer Award 2015. The Marathi translation of The Half Mother was published in 2017, the Telugu version came out in December 2022 and the French version of the novel (La Mère Orpheline) was published by Editions du Rocher in Paris. The Half Mother is 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". 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". His works of fiction have been compared with Saadat Hasan Manto and Anton Chekov. 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."

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

Books

 * The Half Mother (Hachette, 2014), ISBN 978-9350097885
 * Scattered Souls (HarperCollins, 2016), ISBN 978-9352641246
 * The Disease forthcoming...

Book chapters

 * Cinema Palladium, Nachbilder: Eine Foto Text Anthologie (Spector Books via Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and Fotomuseum Winterthur 2021), ISBN 9783959053730
 * The Gravestone, A Clutch of Indian Masterpieces (Aleph Book Company 2016), ISBN 978-9382277293

Awards

 * Research Enhancement and Leadership (REAL) Fellowship (2021-2024), awarded by the University of Massachusetts Amherst
 * 2023 Winter Non-Working Fellowship, awarded by Directorate of Graduate Studies, Department of Communication, UMass Amherst
 * Pro-Helvetia Swiss Arts Council Writer's Residency Award 2018
 * The Citizen's Talent of the Year Award 2016-17
 * Scattered Souls Longlisted for Tata Lit Live Award Best Book Fiction 2017
 * Winner of Muse India Young Writer Award 2015 for The Half Mother
 * Shamim Ahmad Shamim Memorial-Kashmir Times Award 2007
 * University Gold Medal and Award of Merit for a post-graduate degree in media studies, class of 2004-2006