Journalist Alia Ahmed won the 2021 Zeenat Haroon Rashid (ZHR) Writing Prize for women for her story called NAJMA. She will receive a cash prize of RS 100,000. The award was announced on Wednesday on ZHR Writing Prize social media platforms.

NAJMA is a story that depicts an unlikely friendship between a wealthy apathetic young woman and her driving instructor, who can best be described as self-assured. It is a tale about the callousness of privilege that displays “first-rate writing skills,” according to the judges. Ahmed is lauded for setting a backdrop of a frenetic and violent Karachi that felt “very effectively rooted in place.”

Ahmed, an editor formerly with The Herald magazine holds an MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Her work has appeared in The Herald, Dawn and The Hudson Review.

The panel of judges for the award included Tamgha-e-Imtiaz winning writer Kamila Shamsie, academic and author Maryam Wasif Khan, author and playwright Hanif Kureishi, publisher and writer Faiza S. Khan and editor Shan Vahidy.

Vahidy is the granddaughter of Rashid, her mother Syra Vahidy is the principal donor of the ZHR Writing Prize.

ZHR Writing Prize for women honors the memory of Zeenat Haroon Rashid, who was a young stalwart of the Muslim League. Rashid was the founding member of the Women’s National Guard at the time of Independence. She is known for promoting a vision of Pakistani women as equal partners in the struggle for building a modern Pakistan.

The prize is awarded annually to promote, recognize and support women who wish to pursue writing as a career. The winner of the ZHR Writing Prize for 2020 was a 21-year-old Raniya Hosain. She won the prize for her essay called, “Portrait of a Woman in Pain.”

The prize also tweeted the names of the shortlisted authors.

The winning and shortlisted stories can be read on the official website of the ZHR Writing Prize for women.

The editor of Dawn's weekly magazines, Hasan Zaidi, tweeted that Eos magazine will publish Ahmed's story.