The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed and  The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee have both made the shortlist for the 2011 Guardian First Book Award.
The award which recognises the finest new authors who have had their first book published in English in the last year. A winner will be now be selected by a judging panel that includes author and screenwriter David Nicholls.
Commenting on the shortlist, Nicholls said: “It’s hard to imagine a more diverse range of writing than those on the Guardian First Book Award shortlist this …

Charles Pick  South Asian Fellowship –  Award £10,000
The Charles Pick Fellowship is a six-month residential creative writing fellowship with an award of £10,000. The fellowship will begin October 1st 2012.
The Charles Pick South Asian Fellowship seeks to encourage the spirit of writing by giving support to the work of a new and, as yet, unpublished writer of fictional or non-fictional prose based in South Asia. The writer should be from South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Maldives, Burma/Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan), but does not …

The first phase of the Arts Council’s Grassroutes: Contemporary Leicestershire Writing has now ended with the launch of the Grassroutes e-catalogue.
The e-catalogue is an open access database of transcultural writing in Leicestershire with information about titles, authors, genre, year and place of publication. You can browse the entries or search for a particular author or title. If you know of any relevant titles that ought to be added, please contact Corinne at csf11@le.ac.uk. You can also send her your feedback or comments about the catalogue.
Grassroutes promotes public knowledge and engagement …

The 2nd annual DSC Prize for South Asian Literature shortlist was announced at a prestigious gala event at London’s Globe Theatre, October 24.
Guests were treated to a performance by award-winning producer and Tabla player Talvin Singh, alongside Sarod maestro Soumik Datta, while the winner of the first DSC Prize, Pakistani writer H.M. Naqvi gave a reading from his winning novel Home Boy.
The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature has a prize value of $50,000 for the best writing about the South Asian region.
The shortlist of 6 books for the DSC Prize for …

The SI Leeds Literary Prize is a new prize for unpublished fiction by Black and Asian women resident in the UK aged 18 years and over.
The prize aims to act as a loudspeaker for Black and Asian women’s voices, enabling fresh and original literary voices from a group disproportionately under-represented in mainstream literary culture to reach new audiences.
The inaugural prize will be awarded in October 2012, and will consist of:

£2,000 to the winner
£750 to the runner-up
£250 as a third prize

In addition to the cash awards Peepal Tree Press will offer …