Writing Alum Selected as Granta's First New Voice of 2011

Writing Program alumnus Bilal Tanweer (’10SOA) was selected by Granta as the magazine’s first New Voice of 2011.

The Granta article features an interview between Tanweer and Granta Online Editor Ollie Brock that touches on the imaginative labor of translation and the crucial role of voice in fiction.

It also features one of Tanweer’s short stories, “After That We Are Ignorant.” The story is an unvarnished account, told by a sardonic, streetwise narrator and peppered with Urdu slang, of what happens when an over-the-hill poet in a cheap Coca-Cola hat boards a Karachi bus and introduces himself. It marks the opening to a collection of interlinked tales Tanweer is working on, from which another story has appeared in The Life’s Too Short Literary Review.

Tanweer studied fiction at Columbia as a Fulbright scholar. He has recently finished the translation of the comedic novel Love in Chakiwara (and Other Such Adventures) from Urdu, for which he received a 2010 PEN Translation Fund Grant. His work has appeared in The Annual of Urdu Studies, Pakistan Academy of Letters' Pakistani Literature, Alhamra Literary Review, and Words without Borders.