While the 21st century has brought to the world a new era of interconnectedness and openness, what we are learning is that barriers to greater understanding and trust remain. Language, culture, religion, and political differences are just a few of the forces that continue to divide us, within countries and across borders. We can’t advertise or preach our way through these walls. These walls can only be broken down through peer-to-peer discussion and exchange. What flows between people once dialogue begins—hopes, fears, interests, ideas—is the stuff of understanding and goodwill.
At the Open Hands Initiative, it is our goal to create, highlight, and support meaningful two-way conversation between peoples and cultures on a global scale.
One underutilized resource in the effort to foster national, regional, and international dialogue are books. If you want a window into the mindset of mean streets of Victorian England, read Dickens. Want to know from whence the Tea Party sprang? Read Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. Sadly, Western audiences have not discovered the full breadth of the world’s literary community and this has denied us powerful insights into the aspirations and daily existence of people we little understand, but should. That is why the Open Hands Initiative has now partnered with the Daily Beast, Tina Brown’s acclaimed news and current affairs website, to launch a major new annual literary prize that will develop and share new and important South Asian voices with the world and promote cross-cultural understanding.
The Daily Beast- Open Hands Award will award a $25,000 cash prize to the best new, non-fiction writer, journalist or columnist from South Asia who has made thoughtful, important, and engaging commentary on the great social and political issues in the region. The first annual winner will be announced at the 2011 Jaipur Literature Festival in India, one of the region’s foremost literary and cultural events that brings together prominent voices from throughout South Asia.
In formulating the prize, it was incredibly important to us that the award introduce these regional voices to American and Western audiences. To this end, we are providing the winner with a global platform for their writing through a year-long, biweekly column on The Daily Beast. We are also using the award to promote international exchange by bringing the winner to the United States to spend a one-month residence at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, where together with American writers they will exchange ideas, experiences, and perspectives on a wide range of issues.
We are thrilled through this award to encourage the South Asian community to engage in meaningful conversations with the American people.
We look forward to nurturing and growing this dialogue in the years to come, so that such engaging and thoughtful literature and social commentary from not only South Asia, but all parts of the world, will soon become a part of every American’s daily news diet.