LAHORE: Misha Anwar has won the inaugural LLF-British Council Folklore Writing Prize that was launched by the Lahore Literary Festival (LLF) in collaboration with the British Council and the Alhamra Art Council.

According to the announcement made on Sunday, Areej Akhtar won the second position while Tehreem Munir remained third.

Talking to Dawn, Razi Ahmed, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the LLF, says the litfest is proud to have launched the initiative for young writers.

`The LLF is proud to have undertaken its first writing contest in partnership with the British Council and the Dawn Media Group. Buoyed by the response this year, we will continue the momentum next year to encourage more aspiring writers.

Many young students benefited from analysing the paintings of the great landscape and portraiture artist Ustad Allah Bux and honed their analytic and writing skills,` he says.

`The inaugural prize was limitedto young writers of Lahore but we intend to expand the programme further not only to the rest of Punjab but also the country in the next stage.

He adds the LLF had a plan not only to continue the prize but make it a regular feature of the annual litfest.

The panel of judges of the prize was led by novelist and translator Musharraf Ali Faroogi while painter Risham Syed, Laila of British Council, Hasan Tahir and Wajiha Hyder, were among the members. The contest carried cash prizes of Rs100,000, Rs50,000 and Rs25,000 for the first, second and third positions, respectively.

Faroogi says that all the entries were in English language and young writers had sent their original essays and fiction related to Pakistani folklore, centering around Ustad Allah Bux`s paintings. He adds over 50 entries were longlisted by the judges and in the final stage three winners were chosen from them.

The first prize winner Misha Anwar is a recent graduate from the King`s College London.

`I`ve always been inclined towards creative and literary writing but felt a lack of opportunity to explore this,espe cially in Pakistan. So when I saw it two days before the deadline that the LLF had launched this essay (and fiction) writing prize I knew I had to be a part of it,` she tells Dawn.

Mish says she has been an admirer of Ustad Allah Bux`s work for a long time and the prize seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore his genius while testing her own creative ability to recapture the essence of his paintings. `That is what I attempted to do with my essay that won the prize,` she says, terming the prize an excellent initiative by LLF as it provides a platform for students to engage with local art and culture and explore their own writing.

The LLF had invited young writers to submit their original creative pieces in any language and format limited to a maximum of 1,000 words inspired by the paintings of Ustad Allah Bux (c. 1895-1978) at the Alhamra Art Museum.

The writers visited the museum to create a single original work of writing, exploring the resonance of Bux`s folklore. The eligibility criteria required the young writers to be between the age of 16 and 25 and they had to be residents of Lahore.