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. Other work has been published in: Proceeding of the Ninth Conference of the European Society for Central Asia, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, Images of Afghanistan, Oxford University Press, 2010, and Language for a New Century, W.W. Norton & Company, 2008. Bashir Sakhawarz is originally from Afghanistan and has lived in Europe, Asia, Africa and Central America. He worked for a number of international organisations such as the United Nations, the European Union, the Asian Development Bank, The International Red Cross and NGOS