Farah
Ghuznavi is a writer, translator and newspaper columnist, with a background in
development work. A glutton for punishment, she holds three University degrees
from the London School of Economics. After working in several countries with
the NGO sector and the UN, Farah remains an unrepentant idealist despite the
existence of empirical evidence that suggests it might be better to think
otherwise. She began writing fiction in the desperate hope that putting stories
down on paper would get them out of her head and send them on their way. So
far, this strategy appears to be working, one story at a time. Farah’s work has
been widely-anthologised in the US, UK, Canada, France, Singapore, India, Nepal
and her native Bangladesh. Her story Judgement Day was Highly Commended in the
Commonwealth Competition 2010, and Getting There placed second in the Oxford
GEF Competition. She is currently Writer in Residence with Commonwealth
Writers, and has recently edited Lifelines, an anthology of new Bangladeshi
writing for Zubaan Books, India. Farah has been a panellist at the South Asian
Literature Festival (UK), Ncell Nepal Lit Fest, and the Apeejay Kolkata Lit
Fest, CALM Fest Shillong, Kolkata Lit Meet (KLM), Lit for Life Chennai and the
Bangalore Literature Festival in India. She is also on the organising committee
of the Hay Festival Dhaka. Farah’s work has featured in collections such as
Emails from India: Women Write Home (Seraphim Editions, Canada), The Storm is
Coming (Sleeping Cat Books, USA), Curbside Splendor Issues 1 and 2 (Curbside
Splendor, USA), Not Your Mother’s Book…On Travel (Publishing Syndicate, USA),
The Path – Winter Issue 2011 (The Path to Publication, USA) and Woman’s Work
(Girl Child Press, USA) in North America; The Monster Book for Girls
(EXAGGERATED Press, UK), Lady Fest: Winning Stories from the Oxford Gender
Equality Festival (Dead Ink, UK) and Journeys (Sampad, UK) in Britain; as well
as The Rainbow Feast (Marshall Cavendish, Singapore), La.Lit Vol. 1 (La.Lit,
Nepal), What the Ink? (Writer’s Block, Bangladesh), From the Delta (UPL,
Bangladesh) and Lifelines (Zubaan Books, India) in South and South-East Asia.