Rukhsana Ahmad

RUKHSANA AHMAD (1948– ) was born in Karachi, attended schools in many Pakistani cities, and earned degrees at Punjab University and Karachi University. After marrying, she migrated to Britain and earned further degrees from Reading University and The University of the Arts. Ahmad is a novelist and playwright. She has also translated into English a volume of women's protest poetry in Urdu, We Sinful Women (Women's Press, 1991), and an Urdu novel, The One Who Did Not Ask by Altaf Fatima (Heinemann, 1993). In 1984 she joined The Asian Women Writers Collective in London. Her short stories have been anthologized extensively. She has published a novel, The Hope Chest (Virago, 1996), and is working on her second, Sins. She is particularly well known for her many plays, including the recent Mistaken . . . Annie Besant in India (Aurora Metro Publications, 2007), and for her work adapting plays by other writers for BBC Radio, such as Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, Nawal El Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers. These have achieved nominations and short lists for many prestigious British awards, including the Commission of Racial Equality Award, the Writers' Guild Award, the Sony Award, and the 2002 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. To promote Asian women playwrights, in 1990 she cofounded the Kali Theatre Company in London with actor Rita Wolf. She is the chair and founding trustee of the South Asian Arts and Literature in the Diaspora Archive in the United Kingdom (www.salidaa.org.uk), and an advisory fellow for the Royal Literary Fund at Queen Mary's College, University of London.