Karachi, MAR 22 /DNA/ – The Digital Edition of the 12 th Karachi Literary Festival will be held from Friday 26 th March to Sunday 28 th March. At this Festival, three Literary Awards will be presented: two prizes for books written in Urdu and one for books written in English, published during 2019 and 2021. The competition was sponsored by Getz Pharma.

The two categories for the Urdu Prize were Poetry and Prose. In all, 107 entries were received, 65 for

Prose works and 42 for Poetry. The following three books of Poetry have been shortlisted by an

independent jury; Bey Musafat Safar: Shayri Majmua by Dr Peerzada Qasim, Armughan e Pak:

Jiddojahad-e-Azadi ki Manzoom Daastan by Dr Aslam Ansari, and Main Istayron Main Jee Raha

Hoon by Salman Sarwat.

Four books were shortlisted in the Urdu prose category. They are Matan Kuch Gumshuda: Urdu Short

Stories by Samee Ahuja, Shair, Shairiaat aur Fiction: Shams ur Rehman ki Tanqeed ka Mutala by

Safdar Rasheed, Paray Shumaray by Shaheen Abbas and Fikr-o-Intiqad by Aslam Ansari.

For the English fiction prize, 4 books have been shortlisted which are The Fix by Omar Shahid

Hamid, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali by Uzma Aslam Khan, The Selected Works of

Abdullah the Cossack by H M Naqvi, and The Smile Snatchers by Raza Rabbani.

The jury comprised notable literary figures of Pakistan: Muneeza Shamsie, Ghazi Salahuddin, Nadya

Chishty-Mujahid, Prof. Tanzim-ul-Firdous, Dr Nasir Abbas Nayyar, Hameed Shahid, Moinuddin

Aqeel, Asghar Nadeem Syed, and Dr Ambareen Haseeb Amber. The work of the nominees was

judged on originality, creativity, literary genre, and the position a writer takes in his or her work. The

winners will be announced at the opening of the Karachi Literature