The inspiring journey of Author Ali Ashhar which teaches us the value of faith, discipline and passion

Ali Ashhar is one of the youngest authors in our country today. At the age of 22, he received India Prime 100 Authors Award and was chosen as Best Debut Author by The Indian Awaz in the year 2021. His poems, short stories and articles have been published in the UK, the USA, Ireland, Turkey and several other countries around the world.

However, his journey to become an author wasn’t smooth. He hails from the city of Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh and is one of the few English authors of his town. After completing his high school studies, he continued with science to study further. He was sent to Kanpur, a city which is the coaching hub for exams like JEE and NEET in Uttar Pradesh. Finding himself in a crowd of 500-600 students attending IIT coaching along with him was a new experience for him altogether. With this setback, he decided to introspect within and asked himself what went wrong. He found out that instead of science his passion always lied in literature. He decided to mend his decision and became an undergraduate literature student. His decision was mocked by several people including his own relatives; how someone from preparing for IIT went on to study arts. This situation definitely impacted him as a person, but he decided not to back down. He started writing poems, a love he developed while studying literature. During lockdown in April 2020, he  started sharing his poems on social media platforms and many literary pages from England, US, and around the world  featured him on their page. Later that year, his first poem was published in an anthology by one of the most followed publishing houses in India namely, Writer’s Pocket. He went on to co-author several other anthologies, before his first collection of poems was published in June 2021. He won four awards for his debut book followed by some for his second book, Across the Shore published in January 2024. He continued to explore the realms of writing and wrote several articles and short stories which received acclaim nationally and internationally.

Today, he is an internationally-acclaimed author who has won several international literary awards with his writings being published in 20 countries around the globe. He writes column for several prestigious newspapers with his learnings from life. His inspiring talks are covered by several media today. Apart from it, he has been named in the list of winners of several national and international writing competitions organised by Loft Books London, Delhi Poetry Slam, S7 Poetry and others. He has done podcasts for several literary organisation and shot a You Tube video in 2024 for a campaign organized by University English, United Kingdom (a campaign supported by the University of Oxford). He has been invited to the universities and fests in the US and the UK to have his say in the contemporary literary matters.

He believes that life is not what happens to us, but it’s how we deal with what happens with us. He believes everyone is unique in their own way: be it a science graduate or arts graduate , be it a businessman or sportsperson. He believes in proving himself with his actions and living the life by doing what one loves consistently irrespective of someone’s opinion.