https://arab.news/cs47k
- IAFA William L. Crawford Fantasy Award given to a writer whose first fantasy book was published during the preceding 18 months
- Malik won for his story collection Midnight Doorway, his short fiction has previously won British Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani-American Usman T Malik this week became the first author from Pakistan to win the prestigious IAFA William L. Crawford Fantasy Award, a literary prize given each year to a writer whose first fantasy book was published during the preceding 18 months.
The prize is one of several awards given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA), and is presented at a conference each March in Orlando. Over its nearly 40 year-history, the Crawford has been given to only one other book published outside the Anglo countries (Zen Cho's Spirits Abroad published in Malaysia). A Muslim author has never won the award.
Malik has won for his story collection Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan. Among the collection’s tales is one about a woman chaperoning a school trip who is stranded in the ruins of a pre-Islamic city and faces ancient horrors as boys go missing and the fog rolls in. Another story tells the tale of two lovers set adrift amid rising floodwaters in 1960s Old Lahore and one more is about a Lahori orphanage for girls haunted by birds and eerie visions.
“Big News,” Malik announced on his Instagram page. “MIDNIGHT DOORWAYS has won the 2022 Crawford Award for best first fantasy book!”
The award will be presented to Malik at a banquet on March 19, during the 43rd International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Orlando, Florida. The runners-up for this year’s award were E. Lily Yu’s novel On Fragile Waves and Isabel Yap’s collection Never Have I Ever. Previous winners include Carmen Maria Machado, Charles De Lint, Joe Hill, and Jonathan Lethem.
Malik’s short fiction has previously won the British Fantasy and the Bram Stoker awards and been nominated for the World Fantasy, Nebula, Locus, and Eugis Foster awards. His work has been reprinted in several Year’s Best collections, including the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series and featured in Al-Jazeera and WIRED magazine. He also co-founded the Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction, which aims to highlight burgeoning science fiction writers of Pakistani origin.