Indian writer and translator Shahnaz Habib won the 2024 New American Voices Award for her nonfiction book Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel. Fall for the Book announced the award on October 17, 2024, at the prize’s seventh annual ceremony. The award recognizes recently published work that illuminates the complexity of immigrant experience.
What the 2024 award recognized
Fall for the Book describes the New American Voices Award as a prize for recently published works that explore human experience through immigrant voices, which have historically been underrepresented in writing and publishing. The 2024 award received more than 70 submissions, according to the organizer.
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Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel | $13.72 | Buy on Amazon |
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Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel | $38.14 | Buy on Amazon |
Habib received the $5,000 top prize. The other finalists were Carrie Sun, for Private Equity: A Memoir, and Alex Espinoza, for The Sons of El Rey; each received $1,000. The judges named by the organizer were Myriam J. A. Chancy, V. V. Ganeshananthan, and Karin Tanabe. Fall for the Book’s October 17, 2024 announcement reports the result, prize amounts, submission count, finalists, and judges.
What is Airplane Mode about?
Habib’s book is a personal and cultural history of travel that asks who gets to travel and who gets to write about travel. It places her own experiences alongside the larger forces shaping tourism and mobility, including colonialism, capitalism, climate change, race, and unequal treatment tied to passports.
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In a 2023 interview, Habib said her travel essays often dealt with not going somewhere or feeling unhappy and uncomfortable while traveling. She connected those experiences to broader structures, including visa waits and security checks. That focus makes travel’s restrictions and power dynamics part of the story, rather than treating travel only as leisure or escape. The publisher’s book description provides further details about the book.
Habib’s response to the award
At the ceremony, Habib thanked the award for making room for complicated stories, including “the story about being lonely or not being a good immigrant, or of a writer who’s not even sure she’s an immigrant.” Her remarks, quoted in the organizer’s announcement, underline the award’s interest in immigrant experience that does not fit a single, uncomplicated narrative.
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Which editions of Airplane Mode are listed?
The publisher lists hardcover, ebook, and paperback editions. Its paperback listing is dated December 3, 2024, and showed a price of $23.00; price and availability can change, so check the publisher or retailer for current details. The publisher page includes retailer options, including Amazon. Choose the format that suits your reading preference and confirm the listing before ordering.
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