Nadeem Farooq Paracha is a cultural critic, satirist, and a well-known columnist. He writes for Dawn and is also a columnist for the official German media group, Deutsche Welle (DW). Paracha has written extensively on a wide range of political and cultural topics, especially those related to South Asia. His first book on Pakistan’s social history was published last year.

Qazi Fasih is a medical doctor by profession, he has worked as a surgeon in Pakistan and the UK. His first short story was published in a magazine of Cadet College, Kohat. In 1969, he participated in a Drama Writing Competition held by Radio Pakistan, Peshawar and won the first prize, inducing him to write plays for the broadcast media.

Sabyn Javeri is an award-winning short story writer and author of the novels Nobody Killed Her (2017) and Hijabistan (2019). She edited the Arzu Anthology of Student Voices (2018). Her short stories on the topics of gender, class, and the immigrant experience, as well as her texts on creative writing, have been widely published. Her research is currently exploring the

A prominent journalistic and literary personality, Peerzada Salman is a feature writer with the English daily Dawn and a member of staff. He writes on a variety of subjects related to art, culture, and literature. With a Master’s degree in English Literature from Karachi University, he dabbles in short fiction and is also a bilingual (Urdu and English) poet. In

Sana Munir is the Lahore-based author of Unfettered Wings: Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Women. A fiction writer with a feminist approach, she believes Feminism is not just an ideology or school of thought but a way of life rooted in the essential moral principles of equality, acceptance, and justice. Sana has taught Feminist Film Theory and International Communication at Lahore

Karachi-based Shazia Hasan is an award-winning journalist whose various awards for her stories and features also include the Centre for Excellence in Journalism (CEJ) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) inaugural award for Humanitarian Reporting in 2017 and three Agahi Awards. Her book of short stories has also earned her the National Book Foundation Award in 2005. Ms Hasan is

Taha Kehar is a journalist, novelist and editor based in Karachi. He has worked for The Express Tribune and The News and is the author of two novels: Typically Tanya and Of rift and rivalry.

Afia Aslam is an editor, writer, and award-winning blogger based in Karachi. She is a co-founder and director of Desi Writers’ Lounge (DWL), a global platform for new writing from South Asia, and was editor of DWL’s literary magazine, Papercuts, for five years. She and her husband are the founders of Pakistan’s only international short-story prize, the Dastaan Award. Ms