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New writer 2025: Z. K. Abraham

Fiction and Narrative Non-Fiction – Callan Gordon Award

Z. K. Abraham is a writer and psychiatrist M.D., with a master's in creative writing with distinction from University of Edinburgh, and a medical doctorate from Cornell University. She writes at the borders of the literary and the speculative, reality and the uncanny. Her background in psychiatry informs her introspective, often weird fiction. Through the Royal Literary Fund, she was a Reading Round fellow for Edinburgh for 2024–2025.

Her short work has been published in Clarkesworld, The Rumpus, Fantasy Magazine, Fractured Lit, and more, and has also been nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Award. She is represented by Carleen Geisler at ArtHouse Literary Agency.

Find out more on Z. K. Abraham's website(this link will open in a new window)

Writing sample

The Basket

My aunt made many baskets, some of bamboo, some of dried grasses, but mine was made of soft cotton. She started with a bundle of string, looping it outwards from an intricate knot. Out and out, again and again, blooming into a circle of alternating red and yellow and blue. It began to take shape, curving upwards. Did she work on it for hours, days, or weeks? She’d promised it to me. I didn’t believe her. I was flying back in a few days. I missed the ease of America, its coca cola and air conditioning. Finally, she beckoned me over and handed it to me. Caught between impulses, I tried to refuse the gift. No, she winked, then lay it across my small hands, planting sour-breathed kisses on each of my cheeks.

Without remembering packing it, I would find it among my things. When I opened my suitcase on first day of college, nauseous with freedom, I heard a humming just out of my awareness. A high, throat-tightening note. Just like those frenetic East African ululations. My roommate continued to chatter but I stopped listening. When my fingers reached the textured cotton under the pile of linens, the sound stopped.

My basket was once full of dust and old teeth and a tuft of my baby hair. After I heard of the things my father threw away, I wanted to be free of all attachment. I emptied the items from my basket into the palm of my hand, and blew them out the window. I thought I could only move forward in departures, not returns.

Z. K. says:

'When I received the call, I didn't quite understand what was happening at first. I thought I might have made an error on my application. When I learned I was awarded the Callan Gordon Award, I was in shock! I was also so grateful to the Gordon family and deeply moved by his life and impact.'