Soniah Kamal
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Soniah Kamal was born in Pakistan, grew up in England and Saudi Arabia and lives in the U.S., New Mexico, Maryland, Virginia, Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, California.
Soniah Kamal is an award winning essayist and fiction writer. Her novel Unmarriageable: Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice in Pakistan is an Amazon Best Books Pick, a Library Reads Pick, NPR called it “thought provoking and deliciously readable” and it was featured in People Magazine. Her debut novel An Isolated Incident was a finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction, the KLF French Fiction Prize, and is an Amazon Rising Star pick. Soniah‘s TEDx talk is about regrets and second chances. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Catapult, Buzzfeed, The Normal School, The Missing Slate, Literary Hub, and in critically acclaimed anthologies. Soniah’s short story “Fossils”, judged by Claudia Rankine, won the Agnes Scott 2017 Festival Award for Fiction and her story ‘Jelly Beans’ was selected for The Best Asian Stories Series 2017. Her essay ‘The Fall: How to Survive Your Father’s Imprisonment’ was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her short stories and essays have been shortlisted for awards including the Sequestrum Editor’s Reprint Award and the Payton James Freeman Prize and are recommended reads by VELA and Longreads. Soniah is the recipient of the Susan B. Irene Award from St. Johns College where she graduated with a BA Honors in Liberal Arts. She was awarded a Paul Bowles Fiction Fellowship from Georgia State University where she earned an MFA in Creative Writing. Soniah is a member of the National Books Critics Circle, PEN America and the Jane Austen Society of North America and serves as a Jane Austen Literacy Ambassador. Soniah teaches creative writing at the Etowah Valley Writers Institute, the low-residency MFA program at Reinhardt University, taught global literature and fiction at Oglethorpe University. She was a Writer-in-Residence for the Fulton County Library System and teaches fiction workshops in the greater metro Atlanta area. Soniah was a script consultant on the social-activist film ‘Half Widow’ set in Kashmir. Hairy Potter is a collection of Soniah’s weekly social satire column that ran in Pakistan’s national newspaper The Daily Times Sunday. ‘ She served as Fiction Assistant Editor for Five Points: A Journal of Arts and Literature and is Blog Editor for Jaggery: A Desilit Arts and Literature Journal where she started and runs the interview series ‘Drunk on Ink’. Soniah curated and edited Sugar Mule Literary Magazine’s South Asian issue ‘No Place Like Home’, a compilation of memoir, poetry and fiction from 47 writers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Currently she lives in Georgia with her childreen.
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