Last year, we were thinking about some kind of award to commemorate my father. He was a wonderful person – an intellect, soft-spoken, broad-ranging in his thinking and values. One of the things he did for us, his children, was to get us interested in reading, and it was he who introduced us to Science Fiction and Fantasy (now broadly known as Speculative Fiction). It’s remained our favorite genre, with its ability to generate new worlds of ideas.

So when the opportunity popped up to fund a grant to writers in and from South Asia who are working in this genre, we took it. The Speculative Literature Foundation accepts applications, assembles a jury, picks the winner, and makes the award. It’s called  The SLF $1000 A.C. Bose Grant for South Asian Speculative Literature

The SLF and DesiLit are pleased to announce a new co-sponsored grant, founded in memory of Ashim Chandra Bose, known as the A. C. Bose Grant beginning in 2019.

The A.C. Bose Grant will annually give $1000 to a South Asian / South Asian diaspora writer developing speculative fiction. It supports adult fiction, but work that is also accessible to older children and teens will be given preference in the jury process. The donors hope that this grant will help develop work that will let young people imagine different worlds and possibilities.

​The grant is founded in memory of Ashim Chandra Bose. A.C. Bose, a lover of books, and especially science fiction and fantasy, by his children, Rupa Bose and Gautam Bose, in fond memory and to honor the legacy of the worlds he opened up for them.​

The first A.C. Bose award was made on May 26th (Dad’s birth anniversary) to Senaa Ahmad. It was announced at Wiscon, a major Speculative Fiction Convention.

The story that won Senaa Ahmad the award is The Glow-in-the-Dark Girls – a grim fantasy about girls who have been weaponized as radioactive bombs. It was first published in Strange Horizons and you can read it here: The Glow-in-the-Dark Girls.

*
*
*
*

*****