2 South Asians among literary prize finalists

ATLANTA, GA — Indian American author Reetika Khanna Nijhawan and Pakistani American writer Soniah Kamal were selected as two of the ten finalists for the 2016 Townsend Prize for Fiction, though none won the literary honor at the awards ceremony held on April 28 in Georgia.

The Townsend Prize for Fiction is awarded every other year to the Georgia writer judged to have produced the best work of fiction or short stories in the previous two years.

Atlanta-based Nijhawan, whose work has been published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, won the nomination for her first work of fiction, a short-story collection titled, “About Kismetwali & Other Stories.”

Kamal won a place on the prize’s 2016 shortlist for her novel, “About An Isolated Incident.”