The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce that Kiran Kaur Saini is the winner of the 2023 AC Bose Grant.
Cosponsored by the SLF and DesiLit, the AC Bose Grant has been offering support to South Asian / South Asian diaspora writers working within the speculative fiction genre. While applicants may submit adult works, the grant is also accessible to teen authors who take priority during the review process. The AC Bose Grant was founded by Rupa and Gautam Bose in memory of their father, Ashim Chandra Bose, who fostered a love of reading and science fiction in his children in the hope that it will continue to nourish promising works in the genre that continue to move and inspire us all.
Saini’s winning piece is “The Color of Conflagration.”
Kiran Kaur Saini is a Punjabi-American writer whose stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Gulf Coast, The Masters Review, and elsewhere, and have been translated into Spanish and selected for Best of the Year anthology inclusion. Her work has been awarded the Henfield Prize for Fiction, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and recommended to the Nebula Award reading list. Her, a 15-year veteran of the Los Angeles film industry, Kiran stepped away from her career in film production at the start of the pandemic to become a full-time caregiver to her 89-year-old mom. She is currently an Associate Editor for Podcastle. For more information, visit https://kirankaursaini.com.
“The Color of Conflagration” extrapolates from present-day movements seeking to flatten the experiences of marginalized communities. It is one meditation on the individual and collective ramifications of the violence of erasure—silencing personal and cultural experience through legislation, technology, and surveillance.
