Kaiser Haq, eminent Bangladeshi poet and translator, has received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Creative Writing.
The South Asian Literary Association (SALA) honored him with the award on January 7 at the 19th SALA Conference in Chicago, Illinois.
Founded in the early 1970s, SALA’s mission is to advance the knowledge and study of South Asian literatures, arts and cultures; to promote and disseminate an understanding of diasporic writing; and to mentor graduate students and junior colleagues as they pursue new scholarship in South Asian studies and/or publish new works of creative writing in various genres.
Kaiser Haq is Bangladesh’s biggest English language poet. His poetry collections include Pariah and Other Poems (Bengal Lights Books 2013), Starting Lines (Dhaka 1978), A Little Ado (Dhaka 1978), A Happy Farewell (Dhaka: UPL 1994), Published in the Streets of Dhaka: collected poems (UPL, Dhaka) and Combien de Bouddhas, a bilingual poetry selection with French translators by Olivier Litvine (Editions Caracteres, Paris).
His translations include a novel by Rabindranath Tagore, Quartet (Heinemann Asian Writers Series, 1993); a novel by Nasreen Jahan, The Woman Who Flew (Penguin India); and the retold Bengali epic, The Triumph of the Snake Goddess (Harvard University Press).
