Arts Council England has announced the winner of The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2008 in association with Champagne Taittinger. ( May 8, 2008 )
The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2008 has been awarded to the Belgian author Paul Verhaeghen for his novel Omega Minor. Paul Verhaeghen is the first author to have both written and translated the winning title and has therefore won the full £10,000 prize for his work translated from Dutch into English. The prize was presented earlier this evening at a ceremony at the Serpentine Gallery, London. The …

Are you a writer aged 16 or over who has an original, un heard voice? Do you write predominantly in a language other than English? Do you have ambitions to perform or share your work but feel excluded from doing so by a language barrier? Would you like to connect with the Birmingham Book Festival’s writing community and Sampad? Are you unpublished?
The Birmingham Book Festival and sampad are looking for writers who struggle to connect with writing communities and audiences because of a barrier of language, who would like the …

The annual Muslim Writers Awards 2008 recognised the breadth and quality of literary talent within the UK’s Muslim community at a glittering ceremony – attended by the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi and guest of honour Jermaine Jackson.
The event took place on 29 March 2008 at the ICC in Birmingham, and attracted support from the Prime Minister and celebrity advocates such as James Caan (Dragon’s Den).
Kashif Choudhry (28), a doctor from Solihull triumphed at the Short Story award for his piece, Bedtime Story. While Fatima Martin from Surrey, …

Kashif Choudhry is 28 and lives in Solihull. He spent parts of his childhood in Saudi Arabia before moving to the UK and fulfilling a life long ambition by qualifying as a doctor. He currently works for the NHS. He began writing two years ago. He is a fan of the short story art form and thinks that it is underappreciated despite being suited to modern lives. Bedtime Story won the Short Story Award at the Muslim Writers Award 2008.

Once upon a time there was a little boy. He …

Sathnam Sanghera was born in Wolverhampton in 1976. He graduated from Cambridge with a first class degree in English Language and Literature. He currently works as a British journalist and writes a weekly Business LifeThe Times.  If You Don’t Know Me By Now is his first book. To find out more about you can visit his website http://www.sathnam.com
The Asian Writers Project interviewed Sathnam Sanghera to discover what made him write about his family and why he decided to share the story…
What were your greatest fears when you were writing the …

Nalini Paul was born in India, grew up in Vancouver, and has been living in Scotland for 15 years. Her poetry and prose have been published in anthologies and literary magazines in the UK and New York. She has received a number of grants from the Scottish Arts Council to develop her work, including a recent project that sent her to India to conduct research for a novel. She lives in Glasgow and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. This is an extract from her …

Anthony Padman was born in Malaya (as it was then called) and educated in schools in Malaya and Singapore. Later, he went for tertiary studies to the United Kingdom. He graduated with a Law Degree from the University of Wales and subsequently called to the English Bar. He has both taught and practised Law in England for a period of over forty years. You can visit his website www.karmarger.com and read his debut novel MY LEARNED FRIENDS.This is an extract from his short story, A True …

Fatima Martin was brought up a Catholic in Austria. She studied Arabic and Islamic Studies at Vienna University during which time she was granted scholarships to learn Arabic in Egypt and Sudan. After graduation she went travelling, ending up in Jerusalem where she met her spiritual teacher deputy mufti of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Having said the shahaada she studied with him for a year, while at the same time teaching German at a Palestinian school. After her marriage to a British convert she moved to the …

Anita Khan is 25 and lives in High Wycombe. She works with young people and the community. Her social and political outlook shapes her work and her writing. Anita writes short stories, poetry and articles tackling social issues for a local newsletter.

Not in My Name

Not in my name,
The bloodshed and devastation.
Driven only by greed,
Commitment to destroy a creed.
Branded as a holy war,
Causing anger and rebellion.
Imposed as disguised liberators,
With thinly veiled agendas.
The blood of our people staining their own soil,
This, the price paid for the gain of oil.
Opportunists alerted.
Identifying preys as …