Indian Author Shahnaz Habib Bags 'New American Voices Award 2024'
The USA-based Indian author Shahnaz Habib won the New American Voices Award 2024 for her book ‘Airplane Mode’. The book was published in India by the Westland publication. Ms Habib will receive a cash prize of $5000. The New American Voices Award is given by the Institute of Immigration Research in the US which recognises the works of immigrants.
This year’s jury included Myriam JA Chancy, VV Ganeshananthan, and Karin Tanabe. The other finalists were Carrie Sun, author of Private Equity: A Memoir, and Alex Espinoza, author of The Sons of El Rey who will be awarded $1,000 each.
Shahnaz Habib is an Indian essayist, travel, and fiction writer. She teaches writing at Bay Path University and the New School. Ms Habib works as a consultant for the United Nations. In 2018, she was awarded with the JCB Prize for Literature. Habib who basically belongs to Kerala, won the first prize in the Ninth National Poetry Competition in 2000 organised by the Poetry Society in collaboration with the British Council.
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The judges said that the book that Shahnaz Habit in her book ‘Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel’ challenges the idea that people from the Global South don’t travel, they migrate. Ms Habib included essays based on personal experiences and through well-documented research, portrayed a wide range of travel-related aspects from the history of passports to forests, pickles, and carousels. She uncovered eye-opening tales about the journeys of travelers from the Third World across disparate geographies. The book is beautifully written and spark many conversation around the experiences of the travelers from Global South.
