The government is rolling out vaccines and he knows that he isn’t supposed to get one. At least, not yet. The vaccines are for the older folks, the doctors and nurses at the hospitals, the bankers, and the sarkari babus. Everyone but him.

The Man on the Bus (Writing Nepal, 1st place winner)
Pooja Poudel | February 4, 2022Once she overheard two aunties talk about the growing numbers of vehicles on the roads of Kathmandu. ‛The street looks like a colony of ants. The cars are the big ants and the motorbikes are smaller ants and they run a never-ending marathon,’ one of them had said.

The Thin Wall (Writing Nepal, 2nd place winner)
Ritu Rajbanshi | January 28, 2022From the outside, the five-story house looked rickety but whole. On the inside, every storey under the corrugated tin roof was divided into two neat parts. One part belonged to Fakir Das Shrestha – an angry old widower – and his only son, Panna.

Tick-tick-tick (Writing Nepal, 3rd place joint-winner)
Alfa M. Shakya | January 21, 2022The feeling started at her knees and radiated upward, traveling through the capillaries and veins that usually carried blood. Today, there was something else mixed in it whose exact chemical composition Sheela could not tell.

The Story of Chhepu (Writing Nepal, 3rd place joint-winner)
Sadish | January 14, 2022When Kathmandu was a lake, there lived a creature here so grotesque even its own mother could not bear to look at it. Its name was Chhepu. Look above the entrance of any temple in Kathmandu and you will see it posing mid-meal.

Pooja Poudel’s The Man on the Bus wins Writing Nepal, 2021
Sachi Mulmi | January 14, 2022The Writing Nepal contests have been a treat for the readers in Nepal. Since its first edition, it has attracted emerging writers to submit stories to the competition, and some such writers are emerging writers no more, but established on the firmament of Nepali writing in English.

Writing Nepal 2021: Shortlist!
La.Lit | December 16, 2021We are happy to reveal our shortlist for the 2021 edition of Writing Nepal: A Short Story Contest.

The Birdman
Kapil Bisht | November 7, 2021On a blustery June afternoon in 1977, Hari Sharan “Kazi” Nepali stood on the Nepali side of the Tibetan plateau with three dead birds in his satchel. The only food he had was tsampa. “Every time I tried to put a fistful into my mouth, the wind blew it all away,” he recalled.

That’s alright! I, Untouchable, am just fine, Sir
Kewal Binabi | September 24, 2021Flowing through the atmosphere
the breaths that my ancestors have taken
are perhaps drifting somewhere
though the interstices of this flower