Jamaluddin
Aram
Jamaluddin Aram is a documentary filmmaker, producer, and short story writer from Kabul, Afghanistan. His short stories have appeared in Numero Cinq and Blood and Bourbon literary magazines and in 2020 was selected as a mentee by Michael Christie for the Writers’ Trust Mentorship Program. Aram is also the associate producer of the Academy Award-nominated film Buzkashi Boys. He has a bachelor’s degree in English and history from Union College in Schenectady, New York and currently resides in Toronto.
Videos
2020 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award Short Fiction finalist Jamaluddin Aram
Award History
Jury Citation
“'This Hard Easy Life' is as insightful as it is heartbreaking; a story about the ways in which even love itself can become a kind of prison. Through intimate detail, compelling prose, and quiet, emotionally devastating scenes, Jamaluddin Aram gives the reader a nuanced look at life before and after displacement. This complicated, compassionate work of fiction reminds us that who and what we are is forever and inextricably tied to where we are, and where we are not. A painful, beautiful story."
—2020 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award Short Fiction Jury (Kris Bertin, Djamila Ibrahim, and Carrianne Leung)
Program History
Citation
Jamaluddin Aram's manuscript, “On the Hill the Graves” is a collection of eight interconnected stories set in a small, impoverished neighborhood in Kabul, Afghanistan, between 1989 and 1995. To make sense of life and the brutalities of an on-going civil war, characters turn to superstition, myths, dreams, gossip and in the case of Khoja, the bonesetter and herbalist, reciting classic Persian poetry to his cat in the cool darkness of his shop.
