Indian writer Annie Zaidi is 2019 winner of the $100,000 Nine Dots Prize
Indian writer Annie Zaidi was on Wednesday announced as the 2019 winner of the $100,000 Nine Dots Prize, a prestigious book prize created to award innovative thinking that addresses contemporary issues around the world. Mumbai-based Zaidi, a freelance writer whose work includes reportage, essays, short stories, poetry and plays, won for her entry Bread, Cement, Cactus' combining memoir and reportage to explore concepts of home and belonging rooted in her experience of contemporary life in India. What really appealed to me about the Nine Dots Prize was the way it encourages entrants to think without borders or restraints. My work has often crossed over genres, traversing between memoir and journalism, and this timely but wide-open question encouraged us to approach it with methods that were equally far-ranging, said the 40-year-old winner. Now in its second cycle, the prize challenged entrants to answer the question Is there still no place like home?' in a 3,000-word