Pakistani author Farah Ali has just released her first collection of short stories. In 2020, Ali won the Pushcart Prize. She also received a special mention in the 2018 Pushcart anthology.
“People Want to Live” is Ali’s debut collection. It features her award-winning stories about togetherness and fragile hope in an unforgiving world.
Farah Ali: storyteller
Ali’s stories have appeared in Shenandoah, The Arkansas International, the Southern Review and Kenyon Review online. Copper Nickel, Ecotone and The Colorado review have also featured her work.
She wrote her debut collection over time, the first story written over six years ago. The collection explores the lives of those living on the brink of despair, revealing deep vulnerabilities as well as a wealth of resilience.
Ali’s characters attempt to define themselves in the face of overwhelming forces outside of their control. In her own words, her stories give “a glimpse of circumstances specific to a place that could exacerbate personal struggles of working, loving, losing.”
Farah Ali draws on her roots for inspiration
Ali grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, where the stories in “People Want to Live” take place. She first started writing stories at the age of six, “When I was convinced I had stories to tell; when I could not hush the voice in my head,” she says.
She stored her experiences of growing up there—at school as a kid, and at work as an adult. These formative moments make up the source material for her sensitive storytelling.
Ali’s memories of her grandmother’s cooking provide a snapshot of her childhood in Karachi. Her mango chutney—“keri” in Urdu—has stayed in her mind. “If I smelled it again I would think of her and her house and all the hours I spent there,” she remarks.
Farah Ali: “People Want to Live”
Ali has now published her debut collection, and to glowing reviews. The Chicago Review of Books says it “captures with stunning precision and tenderness the lives of people on the brink, struggling against both wider political forces and their own human frailties.”
For Elain Chiew of Foreword Reviews “each story has the emotional heft of a novel.” Brian Castleberry says that “one is left with a greater and deeper sense of humanity for reading them.”
And for Ali herself, her aim is to show that there is a world beyond our inescapable troubles. “It is good and necessary to sometimes do the act of escaping to get a wider, safer space between one’s despairing self and the edge,” she says.
Get the book now at McSweeny’s, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Follow Ali on Twitter for all her latest news.
Check out some of this year’s other award-winning authors here.
