Announcing 2016 WSR Fiction Prize Winner: Saba Waheed
Here’s what judge, Nami Mun had to say about winner Saba Waheed’s piece, “World Cup”:
“When I finished reading “World Cup,” I immediately wanted to read it again. I wanted to see how the writer, in only a few pages, got me to think about Kate Chopin, Grace Paley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Jean-Paul Sartre. Essentially, the story had me thinking: How can a person be when a personhood is filled with so many beings? Or to recycle a bit of Sartre: this story of sharp dialogue and artful compression reminds us that the “others”—with all of their silent and not-so-silent judgments—have given us the means (possibly the only means) for how we judge ourselves.
In “World Cup” hell isn’t other people. Hell is realizing that there is no escaping aunts or parents or a nation of expectations; that it’s nil-nil, no matter how one keeps score. I could go on about “World Cup” and its merits, but I think that’s my point. A good story never ends. A good story, in the right reader’s mind, can only expand.” (Nami Mun, author of Miles from Nowhere)