Fifteen Stories Shortlisted for 2024 Arabic Flash Fiction Prize

SEPTEMBER 9, 2024 – ArabLit and Komet Kashakeel are delighted to announce the finalists for this year’s Arabic Flash Fiction prize.

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This year’s fifteen finalists were selected from among more than 800 submissions by writers from around the world. Submissions were judged blindly – without any knowledge of the authors’ identities – by celebrated authors Shahla Ujayli and Mansoura Ez Eldin, and celebrated translator Sarah Enany.

The selected short-short fictions, all 1,001 words or fewer, range widely in tone, style, and focus: from mordant criticism of political (in)action, to explorations of the dark and light of parent-child relationships, to the changing ways technology mediates human relationships. They were chosen after intense and involved discussions of the many strong short stories submitted for the prize.

The finalists are, in alphabetical order:

Azza Abdulnawar’s “The Days of Nasi’” (أيام النسىء)

Ahmed Abo-Amer’s “Obituary Broadcast” (إذاعة نعي)

Karima Ahdad’s “A Slender Thorn Digs into My Foot” (شوكةٌ رفيعة تحفر عميقاً في قدمي)

Haidara Nabeel Assad’s “The Boy on the Bus with Gooseflesh” (فتى الحافلة ذو القشعريرة)

Hamza Dhahbi’s “Desires That Only Result in Pain” (رغبات لا ينتج عنها الا الألم)

Laila Hashemi’s “Second-hand Life” (حياة مستعملة)

Mahmoud Hosny’s “Here’s the Pulse in My Neck, Ismail” (ها هو نبض عنقي، يا إسماعيل)

Loqman Hussain’s “He Said: I’ll Kill You” (قال: «لأقتلنَّك»)

Yassin Mahmod’s “Circles Open on All Four Sides” (دوائر مفتوحة من الجهات الأربع)

Nasser Rabah’s “Seedlings for the Dead” (شتلات الموتى)

Imad Saad’s “Bird with a Broken Wing” (طائر بجناح مكسور)

Doha Salah’s “Mercy Killing!” (!قتلٌ رحيم)

Ahmed Abdelaty Hafni al-Samman’s “House of Righteous Women” (بيت السيدات الصالحات)

Bassma Shaikho’s “Printing Error” (خطأ مطبعيّ)

Basem Suleiman’s “Zorba’s Dance” (رقصة زوربا)

The prize is for Arabic short stories of 1,001 words or fewer. The first-place winner will receive £300, the second-place winner £200, and the third £100. All finalists will be translated into English, published in an ArabLit chapbook, and produced as flash fiction podcasts. This project is funded by the British Council’s Beyond Literature Borders programme corun by Speaking Volumes Live Literature Productions.

The top three winning stories are set to be announced in one week, on September 16, 2024.

About the finalists:

Azza Abdulnawar is a proofreader and content writer with a BA in Islamic Studies from al-Azhar University.

Ahmed Abo-Amer is from the Sharkia Governorate, Egypt, and studied Physics at the Faculty of Science, Al-Azhar University.

Karima Ahdad is a Moroccan author based in Istanbul. She has been working in journalism and digital-content production since 2014, and she has published three novels: Cactus Girls, published by Dar Al-Fink in 2018; A Turkish Dream, published by the Arab Cultural Center in 2021; and The Other Woman, published by Al-Mutawassit Publications in 2024. She won the Moroccan Writers Union Award for Young Writers in the Short Story category, and her novel Cactus Girls won a Mohamed Zafzaf Award in 2020.

Haidara Assad is a translator and culture editor who studied at the Faculty of Medicine, Damascus University.

Hamza Dahbi is from Morocco, holds a BA in Sociology and writes research, articles and stories.

Laila Hashemi is a Syrian writer who studied translation and tourism. Her published works include Cold Lava (2019) and Escape in Four Tickets (2022), both published by Arab Scientific Publishers Inc.

Mahmoud Hosny Roshdy is a writer from Egypt with a published novel in Arabic Maps of Jonas (2018), and his poetry book in Arabic When I Was a Deer is published this fall 2024. Mahmoud is a literary translator between Arabic and English with three published translations from English into Arabic: Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and The Sea, John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, and John Berger’s To The Wedding. As from Arabic into English, his translation of The Iron Grasshopper, the childhood autobiography of the Kurdish Syrian poet and novelist Salim Barakat is forthcoming with Seagull publishing house, winter 2024. Mahmoud is a fifth-year Provost PhD candidate in The Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture program at the University of Southern California. His dissertation project focuses on the concept of ecological apocalypse in literature, film, and photography across the Arab World and Latin America

Loqman Mohamed Hussain, born in Cairo in 1961, writes novels, plays, short stories and very short stories. He was shortlisted for the State Prize for Children’s Literature (Eighth Session, Short Story and Novel category). His young adult novel, Ant Valley was published by Badael Publishing House in 2021, Cairo. His collection of flash fiction, Ghurba, featuring around 300 short stories, was published by Daad Publishing House in 2019, Cairo. He has also contributed to four other collections of flash fiction. Loqman has won several literary awards through competitions on social media across the Arab world and actively supports publishing works by young authors. He previously served as a consultant for Al-Qisa newspaper.

Yassin Mahmod is an Egyptian short story writer, author of the collection Blood Chaos, which won the 2022 Yahya Al-Taher Abdullah Award. He tries as much as possible to always experiment with form in the art of the short story, to which he is deeply devoted.

Nasser Rabah is Palestinian poet and novelist. He has published five poetry collections and two novels. Some of his works have been translated into French, English and Spanish. He is active in the literary field in Gaza, where he currently lives. (You can donate to a fundraiser to support Nasser Rabah at spotfund.)

Imad Saad is from Homs, Syria. He is a retired civil engineer who writes short stories and novels.

Doha Salah is an Egyptian postmodern writer and translator. She graduated from the Faculty of Dar Al-Ulum, Cairo University, where she is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Literature. Doha works in copywriting, translation, and article writing, and enjoys reading children’s stories and learning Japanese in her free time. Her published works include short stories: Vanilla, published by Kayan Publishing in 2012; and Dear Mr. G, by Dar Aktub in 2013, as well as several novels, including Turtles Don’t Feel Lonely (2022) and A Shortcut to Paradise (2021) published by “Noon” Publishing. She has received several literary awards, including the Akhbar Al-Adab Award (2015), and was shortlisted for the Rashed bin Hamad Al Sharqi Creative Award (2019) and the Sawiris Cultural Award (2021).

Ahmed Abdelaty Hafni al-Samman is an Egyptian writer and physician who writes stories, novels, and poetry. He has won several local and regional awards, including the Akhbar Al-Adab Award in 2016 for his first short story collection, The Bird’s Demise. In 2018 and 2019, the European Institute of the Mediterranean selected him among the top ten writers from 44 countries. He has three published works: The Bird’s Demise (a short story collection), Cashew (a short story collection), and The Conditions of the Transient World (a novel).

Bassma Shaikho holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts and is a former university professor at Damascus University and the Arab International University. She writes research and articles on visual arts and criticism in various Arab magazines and newspapers. Her publications include Interior Design in Kindergartens, and she has a forthcoming collection of short stories for young adults. A member of the Arab Writers Union and Poetry Association, Bassma has published four poetry collections and contributed to several anthologies, including World Poetry Tree, Arabic Haiku, and The New Wave of Syrian Poetry, as well as anthologies of women’s poetry in German and female poets in French. Her poems have been translated into Japanese, German, English, and French. She has participated in numerous festivals, including the Arab Writers Union’s Pain and Hope Festival (2013), the Arab Poetry Festival (2017), the Oran Festival (2018), and the Festival of Resistance Literature for Palestine (2023).

Basem Suleiman is a writer, poet, and critic from Syria with a BA in Law from Damascus University. He writes for several Arab magazines, newspapers, and websites, and has many published works including two novels: Nokia, published by Dar Lilit in 2014, Egypt, and by Dar Seen in 2018, Damascus; and A Crime in Al-Qabbani Theater / Limit and Suspicion, published by Dar Meem in 2020, Algeria. He has also published stories, including Tamaman Qibla, published by Dar Kiwan in 2009 and by Dar Seen in 2019; and White Butterflies published by Dar Maysaloon in 2003. His most recent poetry includes My Head is Expansive, My Body is Standing, and I am a Fraction Between Numbers, in the Transformations Series by the Arab Center for Journalism in 2023, Egypt.

About the judges:

Sarah Enany is a literary translator who works between Arabic and English. She has had this affliction for at least 30 years; it is probably hereditary since her parents were both literary translators. Among the works she has perpetrated is The Girl With Braided Hair by Rasha Adly, which won the 2022 Banipal Prize for translation.

Mansoura Ez Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and short-story writer whose works have been celebrated by a number of literary prizes and translated into more than ten languages. Among others, she has won prizes at the Cairo International Book Fair, the Sharjah International Book Fair, and been shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Her short story “Gothic Night” was the centerpiece of a Granta translation competition, won by Wiam El-Tamami. She currently serves as the managing editor of Akhbar Al-Adab.

Shahla Ujayli is a Syrian novelist and short-story writer who won the prestigious Almultaqa Prize for Arabic Short Stories for her collection A Bed for the King’s Daughter, which was translated to English by Sawad Hussain. She has twice been shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, for A Sky So Close to Home and Summer with the Enemy, both of which were translated to English by Michelle Hartman.