- Mumbai-based writer Annie Zaidi has won $100,000 Nine Dots Prize 2019, an award for creative thinking that tackles contemporary societal issues.
- Annie Zaidi is a freelance writer whose work includes reportage, essays, short stories, poetry and plays. She won the prize for her entry ‘Bread, Cement, Cactus’ — a piece that combined memoir and reportage to explore concepts of home and belonging.
- The prize challenged entrants to answer the question ‘Is there still no place like home?’ in a 3,000-word essay.
- The 40-year-old Annie Zaidi has published both fiction and non-fiction, including a collection of essays Known Turf: Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales and Love Stories # 1 to 14, a collection of short fiction published in 2012.
About Nine Dots Prize
- The Nine Dots Prize is funded by the Kadas Prize Foundation, a U.K.-registered charity.
- The winner is supported to develop their response into a full-length book, which will be published by the Cambridge University Press.
- This award also gives the recipient the opportunity to spend a term at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge University.