Kishwar Naheed is one of the best known feminist poets of Pakistan. Born in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, India in 1940, her family moved to Lahore in Pakistan during the 1947 Partition of the sub-continent. Kishwar had to fight to receive an education at a time when women did not go to school; she studied at […]
Born in Kirkuk in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1967, Kajal Ahmad began publishing her remarkable poetry at the age of 21. SHe has published four books: Benderî Bermoda (1999), Wutekanî Wutin (1999), Qaweyek le gel ev da, (2001) and Awênem şikand , (2004). Kajal has gained a considerable reputation for her brave, poignant and challenging work […]
Born in 1932, Hiren Bhattacharjya is one of the most popular contemporary poets in Assam. His first poem was published in 1957. His first anthology of poems Mor Desh Mor Premor Kabita was published in 1972. Bibhinna Dinar Kabita (1974) Kabitar Rode (1976) and Tomar Gaan (1976) followed in what was perhaps his most prolific […]
Ismaciil Mire is one of the most renowned and best-loved Somali poets of the early twentieth-century. As well as producing a substantial body of poetry, he spent many years as a soldier fighting the British.
Born in 1956 in Aydın, Turkey, Lale Müldür has published eight collections of poetry and is widely regarded as one of the most important Turkish poets of the last 20 years. Her unique, individual style sets her apart from her peers, and has led to her having considerable influence on other contemporary Turkish poets. After […]
Kyoo Lee is a philosopher, poet, critic, and the author of Reading Descartes Otherwise (Fordham UP), Writing Entanglish(Belladonna*) and a forthcoming book on visual philopoetics (The MIT Press). Currently, she teaches at the City University of New York where she is Professor of Philosophy and the faculty leader for a Mellon public seminar, mp3: Poetry, […]
Muhammad al-Fayturi was born in Sudan – he does not know the year of his birth – in Al-Janina on the western border of Sudan. His father was a Sufi sheikh of Libyan Bedouin extraction while his mother was from a Gulf tribe which traced its lineage back to the Prophet Muhammad. Soon after his […]
Mengistu Lemma (1928-1988) was a playwright and poet of the post-1941 period in Ethiopian Amharic literature. He was steeped in traditional literary culture, having undertaken a church education in his early years, and he was very much influenced by his father. Mengistu Lemma was part of the socially committed trend in Ethiopian literature which was […]
Pir Muhammad Karwaan is a well known Pashto poet. Now in his late forties, he was born in Khost in Afghanistan. Karwaan migrated to Peshawar in 1990 and lived there for more than a decade. He returned to Kabul after the end of the Taliban regime; he works with the BBC’s Afghan Education Project. Pir […]
Parween Faiz Zadah Malaal is one of the most popular women poets writing in Pashto. Born in 1957, in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, Parween Malaal got an education in her native city of Kandahar before graduating from Kabul University. She began her career as a journalist by writing for a prominent paper, Tolo-e-Afghan, published in […]