Bio
Soniah Kamal is an award-winning novelist, essayist and public speaker. Her most recent novel, Unmarriageable has been hailed "the gold standard of Pride and Prejudice adapatations". Unmarriageable is a Financial Times Readers’ Best Book of 2019, a New York Public Library, a NPR Code Switch Summer Read Pick, a People’s Magazine pick, a ‘Books All Georgians Should Read,’ a 2020 Georgia Author of the Year for Literary Fiction nominee and shortlisted for the 2020 Townsend Award for Fiction and more. Soniah's work has appeared in critically acclaimed anthologies and publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic. Soniah has an MFA from Georgia State University where she was a Paul Bowles Fiction Fellow and a BA in Philosophy from St. Johns College where her thesis received the Susan. B. Irene Award. Soniah’s short story ‘Fossils’, judged by Claudia Rankine, won an Agnes Scott Festival Award for Fiction and her short story ‘A Suitable Girl’ was selected for The Best Asian Stories Series. Other works have received Pushcart nominations, short listed for the Sequestrum Editor’s Reprint Award, the Payton James Freeman Prize, and been recommended reads by Longreads and VELA. Soniah curated and edited Sugar Mule Literary Magazine’s South Asian issue ‘No Place Like Home’ a groundbreaking compilation of memoir, poetry and fiction exploring partition, borders and boundaries from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Soniah’s TEDx talk is about the cultural implications of What Will People Say. ‘We are the Ink’, her address at a U.S. Citizenship Oath Ceremony is about the real American Dream. She has taught creative writing at Emory University, Oglethorpe University and Reinhardt University and given workshops in the U.S. and internationally. Soniah grew up in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and England and resides in the U.S.
