I grew up in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, and now live in Newark, USA. My debut novel, AMERICAN FEVER, is forthcoming from Sceptre and Arcade in August 2022 (pre-order here).
My work has appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, and Al Jazeera, among others. I won the 2021 Salam Award and the 2019 Financial Times / Bodley Head Essay Prize. I graduated from Yale College and the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan.
Agent: Matthew Turner at Rogers, Coleridge & White
US Publicity: Kathleen Schmidt at Skyhorse Publishing
UK Publicity: Louise Court at Sceptre
Film Rights: Shivani Doraiswami at Grandview LA
DUR E AZIZ AMNA
American Fever
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Forthcoming August 2022. Now available for pre-order at:
Bookshop
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Books a Million
IndieBound
For fans of Valeria Luiselli and Mohsin Hamid comes a fresh new perspective on coming-of-age as a Pakistani Muslim in rural America.
“This is a fearless, exacting, essential work, and marks the debut of a thrilling new global voice.”—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
On a year-long exchange program in rural Oregon, sixteen-year-old Hira must swap Kashmiri chai for volleyball practice and understand why everyone around her seems to dislike Obama. A skeptically witty narrator, Hira finds herself stuck between worlds. The experience is memorable for reasons both good and bad; a first kiss, new friends, racism, Islamophobia, homesickness. Along the way Hira starts to feel increasingly unwell until she begins coughing up blood, and receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis, pushing her into quarantine and turning her newly established home away from home upside down.
Other Work
Fiction
"You Get What is Yours," October 2021
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Winner of the 2021 Salam Award
"Cafe May," Catapult, August 2021
"A Cold Heart," Himal Southasian, January 2020
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Shortlisted for the 2019 Himal Southasian Short Story Competition
"Asma," London Magazine, April 2018
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2017 London Magazine Short Story Competition, 2nd Place
Personal Essay
"The Many Homes of My Mother," Al Jazeera, September 2021
"Writing Into and Out of My Long-Distance Grief," New York Times, December 2020
"Your Tongue is Still Yours," Financial Times, November 2019
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2019 Financial Times / Bodley Head Essay Prize Winner (e-book link)
"House on Mayo Road," Longreads, November 2018
"American Smile," The Offing, June 2018
Food & Culture
"The Ismaili Muslims of Pakistan," The Juggernaut, April 2020
"Finding South Asia on the Swahili Coast," The Juggernaut, October 2019
"Good Woman, Bad Woman," The Juggernaut, August 2019
"Forget white bloggers from Poland. How much do Pakistanis know about domestic tourism?" Dawn, May 2019
"Pakistan's Wedding Industrial Complex," Dawn, April 2019
"Why do women have to sit in family halls in restaurants?" Dawn, March 2019
"The Ramadan Drummer of Coney Island," Roads & Kingdoms, June 2017
"The Best Little Lunch Dive in Islamabad," Roads & Kingdoms, May 2017
"From Portugal to the Ironbound," Roads & Kingdoms, March 2017
Travel
Sri Lanka: "Teardrop in the Indian Ocean," The News, March 2019
Myanmar: "At Home in Burma," The News, March 2019
Vietnam: "Vietnam's Heart," The News, March 2019
Cambodia: "In the Land of Angkor Kings," The News, February 2019
Indonesia: "Javanese Days," The News, February 2019
Colombia: "Amethyst Afternoons in Cartagena," The News, April 2018
Portugal: "The Island No One Told You About," The News, April 2018
Book Reviews
"An Ode to Innocence," The News, June 2018
"Speaking Truth to Empire," The News, April 2018
Translation
"Yours and Mine," Annual of Urdu Studies Volume 28, 2013
Literary Criticism
"Requiem: Agha Shahid Ali’s Last Canzone," Mad Heart Be Brave, University of Michigan Press, 2017
"Postcolonial London," Columbia Journal of Literary Criticism Volume XIII, Spring 2015
Other Honors
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Chamberlain Prize, University of Michigan, 2021
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Longlisted, Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, 2020
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Busch Prize in Fiction, University of Michigan, 2020
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Hopwood Prize in Novel, University of Michigan, 2020
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Hopwood Prize in Nonfiction, University of Michigan, 2020
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Wagner Prize in Nonfiction, University of Michigan, 2020
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Longlisted, Commonwealth Short Story Prize, 2019
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Emerging Writers Fellowship, Aspen Words, 2018
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NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Scholarship, Catapult Writing Workshop, 2018