Bashir Sakhawarz is an award-winning poet and novelist. His first poetry collection in 1978 won the first prize for New Poetry from the Afghan Writers' Association. Sakhawarz has published seven books in Persian and English. His latest novel, Maargir, The Snake Charmer was entered for the Man Asian Literary Prize by the publisher and was long-listed for India's 2013 Economist Crossword Book Award. His other works have been published in: Proceeding of the Ninth Conference of the European Society for Central Asia, Images of Afghanistan and Language for a New Century. In June 2015 he won the first prize for fiction from Geneva Writers Group. [Fiction]