Zakir Hassan Jamal


image of Zakir Jamal
Courtesy of Caleigh Stephens

About


Zakir Jamal is a writer and editor living in Montreal. His fiction has appeared in Pastiche and ahoy and his nonfiction in the Los Angeles Post. He also edits fiction at Scrivener Creative Review. His story "Reflections on the Occasion" was named to the shortlist of the 2026 Leopold Bloom Prize for Innovative Narration by L'Esprit Literary Review, and he is the recipient of a Quebec Writer's Federation Fiction Mentorship for 2026. He is working on a novel and a short story collection.


Zakir holds a bachelor's degree in Philosophy from the University of Chicago, and expects to complete his MA in English at McGill University in the summer of 2026. He has worked in education, journalism, and copywriting. Some of the results are linked on the publications page. Starting in Fall 2026, he will be a student at the University of Notre Dame's MFA program in Fiction.

Selected Publications


Fiction

"Narrowing of the Waters," in The Point (forthcoming)

"Australopithecus," in ahoy issue 4, Winter 2026 (print only)

"Higher Things," in Pastiche issue 3, Summer 2025


Criticism

Review: Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff, Your Name Here, in Scrivener Creative Reivew issue 48, Spring 2026 (forthcoming)


Nonfiction

"Stop Studying the Same People," The Decision Lab

"Harm Reduction is Under Fire Across California," originally published by the Los Angeles Post

"Have You Seen This T-Shirt?," Haloscope

Contact


zakirhjamal at gmail dot com

instagram.com/zakirjamal