Ali Akbar Natiq

Ali Akbar Natiq is among the foremost voices writing in Urdu today. He is the author of fifteen books
across the genres of fiction, poetry, biography and literary criticism. His work enjoys the rare honour of being both critically acclaimed and bestselling. It has been translated into English, Hindi and German, and featured in New York Times and Granta. His collection of short stories, Qaim Din (Oxford University Press, 2012), was awarded the UBL-Jang Literary Excellence Award in 2013. In addition to being an author, he is an accomplished architect.


Naima Rashid is an author, poet and translator whose work was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition and Best Small Fictions. She has translated three works from Urdu and French into English, and her own fiction and poetry are forthcoming 2024 onwards. Her writings have been widely published in reputed journals like Asymptote, The Scores, Wild Court, Poetry Birmingham and The Aleph Review. In addition, she is a collaborator with the UK-based translation collective, Shadow Heroes.