QASMI, AHMAD NADEEM (1914–2006): Qasmi had a long and rich literary career, over the course of which he distinguished himself not only as a poet but as a short story writer, editor, and newspaper columnist, as well as being one of the leading lights of the Progressive Writers’ Movement. In addition to his many collections of Urdu poetry, Qasmi produced sixteen volumes of short stories. From 1964 to the time of his death, he edited the literary magazine Funoon, in which the work of many new Urdu writers first appeared. He also served as the guest editor of the quarterly Urdu journal Adbiyat, published by the Pakistan Academy of Letters. He was awarded the Adamjee Award for Urdu Poetry in 1964, the Pride of Performance in 1968, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 1980, and in 1997 received a Kamal-i-Funn from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. The government of Pakistan awarded him the Nishan-i-Imtiaz in 1999.
RAHI, AHMAD (1923–2002): Born Amritsar, Rahi is the author of two collections of poems in Urdu, Rut Aai Rut Jai and Rag-i-Jan. He also produced a volume of poems in Punjabi, Trinjin, that critics hold in high regard. He is also well known for the stories, songs, and dialogue that he wrote for Punjabi films. He has served as the convener of the Punjabi Adabi Sangat, the most prestigious literary forum of its time, and was awarded the Pride of Performance by the government of Pakistan in 1998.
RASHID, N. M. (1910–1975): Born in 1910 in Gujranwala, a town now in the northeast of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Rashid was one of the pioneering figures of modern Urdu poetry. He worked for All-India Radio until he joined the United Nations, serving in numerous countries over his distinguished career. His first collection, Marva, published in 1940, was a revolutionary book of free verse, seen at the time as a radical break with tradition, until Rashid’s subsequent collections—Iran Mein Ajnabi, La=Insaan, and Guman Ka Mumkin—made clear his deep connections to the history of Urdu poetry. He also translated a selection of modern Persian poetry into Urdu, and his complete poems are available as Kulliyat-i-Rashid.
RIAZ, FAHMIDA (1946– ): Born in Meerut shortly before Pakistan came into existence, Riaz is regarded as one of Urdu’s front-rank poets. She has given great thought to the issue of language and a working-class audience, often choosing a rustic diction for its familiarity rather than employing a more formal Persianized expression. Among her works are Pathar Ki Zuban, Badan Durida, Dhoop, and Kiya Tum Poora Chand Na Daikho Gay? Fahmida Riaz has also translated selected works of Rumi and Farogh Farrukhzad. Presently Fahmida Riaz is head of the Urdu Dictionary Board of Pakistan.
SAMANDAR, SAMANDAR KHAN (1901–1990): Samandar started writing poetry at an early age and soon became known for his longer poems. One such work, Da Tauheed Tarang—a verse interpretation of the holy Kalma-e-Tayyaba, the basic declaration of Muslim faith (La ila ha il allah, Muhammad ur Rasul Allah: There is no god but God, and Muhammad is Allah’s Messenger)—is regarded as his most outstanding literary achievement. He wrote a number of other book-length poems (such as Da Bilal Bang, Dayalam Soka, and Quran Jara), as well a book on ilm-ul-urooz, the study of the rules of Urdu poetry, under the title Joor Samandar. His complete poems have been published as Let Aular. He also translated two of the poetry collections of Allama Muhammad Iqbal (Asrar-i-Khudi and Ramooz-i-Bekhudi) into Pashto. He was awarded the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz by the government of Pakistan in 1987.
SEHBAI, SARMAD (1945– ): Sarmad Sehbai obtained his master’s in English literature from the Punjab University, Lahore. He started his career as Program Producer with Pakistan Television Corporation and rose to become its Managing Director. His collections of Urdu poetry include Un Kahi Batoon Ki Thakan and Neeli Kay So Rung. He has also published a volume of Urdu plays titled Kathputliyoon Ka Shehr. He lives in Islamabad.
SHAD, ATA (1939–1997): Ata Shad became popular as both a Balochi and an Urdu poet at a young age. He was the author of two collections of verse in Urdu (Sangaab and Barfaag) and three in Balochi (Rooch Gar Shap, Sahaar, and Nadeem). He also compiled an Urdu-Balochi dictionary and the Balochi Haft Zabani Lughat (dictionary in seven languages). He received the Pride of Performance from the government of Pakistan in 1983, followed by the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 1992.
SHAKEEL, SHABNAM (1942– ): A poet noted for her elegant work in Urdu, Shakeel has published two volumes of poetry, Iztirab and Shab Zad, as well as a collection of short stories titled Na Qafas Na Aashiana. She is also the author of a book of sketches and critical essays, Taqreeb Kuch To. She has been active as a teacher, and her writing on women poets was published under the title Khawateen Ki Shairi. Shabnam received the Pride of Performance in 2004. She lives in Islamabad.
SHAKIR, PARVEEN (1952–1994): Born in Karachi, Shakir taught English for nine years before joining the Civil Service of Pakistan, and was a senior officer when she died in a road accident. Her romantic verse became popular early in her literary career. Her first collection of poetry, Khushboo, received the Adamjee Literary Award in 1978. Among her other collections are Sad Burg, Khud Kalami, Inkar, Kaf-i-Aina, and her collected works, Mah-i-Tamam. She was honored with the Faiz Ahmad Faiz Literary Award in 1989 and with the Pride of Performance in 1990.
SHAMIM, AFTAB IQBAL (1933– ): Shamim is an Urdu poet whose verse often gives voice to his social concerns and his protest against injustice. His collections of Urdu poetry include Farda Nazad, Zaid Say Mukalama, and Gum Samandar. He was awarded the Pride of Performance in 2005. He lives in Islamabad.
SHINWARI, AMIR HAMZA KHAN (1907–1994): Born in a village in the Khyber Agency (in what is now Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province), Shinwari has been acclaimed as Pashto’s Baba-i-Ghazal (Father of the Ghazal). A prolific poet, who wrote blank verse in addition to ghazals, he was also the author of numerous prose works, including a novel, and was the screenwriter for the first Pashto-language film, Laila Majnu. He became president of the Ulusi Adabi Jirga in 1951—an organization promoting Pashto culture—and the following year organized a literary society called Khyber-Pakhto Adabi Jirga, which likewise has played a very important role in promoting the Pashto language and literature. Regarded as a trendsetter in the area of Pashtu ghazal, he has also translated the Kalam-i-Iqbal, a selection from the Poems of Allama Iqbal, into Pashto. He was awarded the Pride of Performance in 1978, and the Sitara-i-Imtiaz was conferred on him posthumously in 1994 by the government of Pakistan.
VALLABH, PUSHPA (1963– ): A poet who writes in Sindhi, Urdu, and English, Vallabh was trained as a doctor. She began her literary career during her student years, editing college magazines. Her poems have been published in a variety of well-respected literary magazines, including the Pakistan Academy of Letters’ semiannual English-language publication, Pakistani Literature. She was presented with the Sindhi Adabi Sangat award in 1985, and a volume of her Sindhi poetry, Dari-e-Khaan Bahi, appeared in 1992. She lives in Karachi.
ZAIDI, MUSTAFA (1930–1970): Born in Allahabad, Zaidi migrated to Pakistan in 1951. In 1954, he joined the Civil Service of Pakistan, but his scandalous lifestyle resulted in his dismissal from government service. In 1970, he was found dead in his bed with his lover Shahnaz Gul beside him in a state of unconsciousness. It was determined after a court inquiry that both lovers had attempted to commit suicide by taking poison. As a poet, Zaidi produced a number of collections in Urdu, including Mauj Meri Sadaf Sadaf, Shehr-i-Aarzoo, Zanjeerain, Koh-i-Nida, and Qaba-i-Saaz. His collected works were published posthumously as Kulliyat-e-Mustafa Zaidi.
OTHER CONTRIBUTORS
AZMAT AHMAD ANSARI is an explorer, researcher, producer of documentary films, actor, translator, journalist, and playwright. He teaches in an MBA program at the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi, offering courses in business administration, oral communication, advertising, and media management.
IFTIKHAR ARIF: see Poets
MEHR AFSHAN FAROOQI is an assistant professor in the University of Virginia’s Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. She specializes in the literary cultures of South Asia, especially the literary culture and history of north India, and teaches bo
th Hindi and Urdu language and literature. Her most recent publication is the two-volume Oxford India Anthology of Modern Urdu Literature (2008). She is presently working on a monograph on the Urdu literary and cultural critic Muhammad Hasan Askari.
ASIF FARRUKHI was born in 1959 in Karachi and trained as a physician at Karachi University and then at Harvard. As a writer and editor, he has published several collections of short stories and literary essays and has translated widely from world literature into Urdu. He is also the founder and editor of the literary journal Duniyazad, which publishes literary works from Pakistani and other languages in Urdu translation. He lives in Karachi.
M.A.R. HABIB received his PhD from Oxford University. A professor of English at Rutgers University, he is the author of five books, including An Anthology of Modern Urdu Poetry in English Translation (MLA, 2003) and A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present (Blackwell, 2005).
YASMEEN HAMEED: see Poets
SALEEM KAMILI, a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, and an associate editor of the Journal of Clinical Virology, is an ardent lover of Kashmiri and Urdu poetry. He came to the United States in 1996 on a research fellowship after completing his PhD in biochemistry.
PERVEZ KHAN, who writes under the name Pervez Sheikh, was born in Peshawar, where he is presently the principal of Government High School. He holds a master’s degree in Urdu, Pashto, and English, and is the author of Tauda Bakara, a novel in Pashto. He also translates regularly from Pashto into English for the journal Pakistani Literature and other Pakistani publications.
KHURRAM N. KHURSHID has a PhD in English from the University of New Brunswick, Canada. His research areas include postcolonial literature, partition narratives, and Indian and Pakistani fiction. He grew up in Pakistan, where he taught English at various colleges of the Punjab University for a number of years.
OMER KHWAJA has an MA from the University of Chicago. His interests lie in social movement unionism. Having spent two years working as a professional organizer for community organizations and labor unions across the United States, he hopes to write the first ethnographic account in Urdu of the revival of organized labor in the U.S.
WAQAS KHWAJA, professor of English at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, has a PhD from Emory University in Victorian fiction and teaches courses in nineteenth-century British literature, Romantic prose and poetry, postcolonial literature, and poetry writing. He has published three collections of poetry, No One Waits for the Train (2007), Mariam’s Lament (1992), Six Geese From a Tomb at Medum (1987); a literary travelogue, Writers and Landscapes (1991), about his experiences with the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa; and has edited three anthologies of Pakistani literature, Cactus (1986), Mornings in the Wilderness (1988), and Pakistani Short Stories (1992), which also contain his translations of works from Urdu and Punjabi. He was a practicing lawyer, newspaper columnist, and regular contributor to The Frontier Post, The Pakistan Economic Review, The Pakistan Times, News International, The Nation, and The Friday Times between 1985 and 1992 in Pakistan before relocating to the United States in 1994. He has also contributed scholarly articles to academic journals and publications.
GEETA PATEL, whose research has engaged the politics, poetics, and economics of violence, loss, and transgression, is an associate professor at the University of Virginia. Her book Lyrical Movements, Historical Hauntings: Gender, Colonialism, and Desire in Miraji’s Urdu Poetry (Stanford, 2002) reads gender and sexuality in twentieth-century Urdu poetic movements that emerge out of the lyric of loss. She has translated prose and poetry from Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi, Braj, and Awadhi.
SHAH MOHAMMED PIRZADA was born in a family of writers and poets in a village near Mohenjodaro, Sindh. Trained as a medical technologist at Karachi University, he is a well-known Sindhi poet who occasionally writes in Urdu and English. In collaboration with Asif Farrukhi, he has translated selected poems by Sheikh Ayaz into English, and has also published a collection of his own poetry.
Born in Ranchi, India, Alka Roy is a writer, performance artist, and engineer who works with new technologies in Atlanta and pursues non-capitalist ventures with human rights and environmental justice organizations and movements. She has studied classical Indian dance, in addition to engineering, and has an MFA from Bennington College. She has performed across the United States, and her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in many magazines and journals.
MUHAMMAD AFZAL SHAHID is a poet and a scholar of classical Punjabi literature. He writes on contemporary themes in English, Urdu, and Punjabi and is the author of seven collections of Punjabi poetry. A physicist by training, he has worked at Carnegie Mellon University and at Bell Labs.
AMRITJIT SINGH, Langston Hughes Professor of English at Ohio University, is a series editor for the MELA (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the Americas) Series from Rutgers University Press. He has authored or co-edited over a dozen books, including Postcolonial Theory and the United States (2000), The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman (2003), and Interviews with Edward W. Said (2004). His poems and translations from Punjabi poetry and fiction have appeared in the Toronto Review, Nimrod, the Edinburgh Review, New Letters, Chelsea Magazine, the Salzburg Poetry Review, and the South Asian Review.
SHER ZAMAN TAIZI was born in Pabbi, in what was then the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. He has fifteen books in Pashto, including five novels, and twenty-four in English to his credit. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Certificate in 1981 and the Tamgha-i-Imtiaz in Literature in 2009. He has done research and translation work in English relating to Afghan affairs.
FAKHAR ZAMAN is the former Minister of Culture of Pakistan and former Chairman of the National Commission of History and Culture, the Academy of Letters, and the National Committee for the World Decade on Culture and Development. He is also the author of twenty-five books (novels, poetry, drama, and travelogues) written in Punjabi, Urdu, and English. Zaman has received several international awards and his books have been translated into various languages. He has also written many plays for TV and radio. Fakhar Zaman is presently chairman of the World Punjabi Congress as well as Secretary General of the International Congress of Writers, Artists and Intellectuals.
IFTIKHAR ARIF is an Urdu poet and scholar. He is currently the Chairman of Pakistan’s National Language Authority and has received the Presidential Pride of Performance award. His poetry has been translated into several languages, including English in the collection Written in a Season of Fear.
WAQAS KHWAJA is a Professor of English at Agnes Scott College. He has published three collections of poetry and a travelogue, and has edited several anthologies of Pakistani literature.
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