Filmmaker, journalist, and cultural critic, Hasan Zaidi is currently the Editor Magazines at Dawn, overseeing the newspaper’s weekly print magazines Eos, Icon, and Young World. Thrice recipient of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society’s award for excellence in journalism, he has worked for print, television, radio, and digital. As a filmmaker, he has directed and produced a number of documentaries, music

Raza Naeem is a Pakistani social scientist, literary activist, blogger, book critic, and an award-winning translator and dramatic reader based in Lahore. He has been trained in Political Economy from the University of Leeds in UK, and in Middle Eastern History and Anthropology from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, USA. He has engaged with the Middle East since the

Namita Gokhale is an award-winning writer, publisher, and festival director. She has written 20 books, including 11 works of fiction. Her recent novel, Jaipur Journals, will be published in the UK in April 2021. Betrayed By Hope, a play on the tragic life of the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, was published in December 2020. A co-founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Gokhale

An artist, art critic, and curator, his writings have been published in magazines, catalogues, and books both nationally and internationally, and his artwork has been widely exhibited, most recently at Whitechapel Gallery, London, as part of a commemorative show titled, ‘Where Three Dreams Cross: 150 Years of Photography in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh’ (2010). He was a writer-in-residence at Ledig

Amjad Islam Amjad is an Urdu language poet, dramatist, lyricist, and man of letters. He is perhaps best known for writing the television drama series Waris, which was followed by Dehleez, Samandar, Raat, Waqt, and Apnay Log. He has received many awards for his work, including Pride of Performance in 1987 and Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 1998. He began his working life

Ambassador Arif Kamal is a retired career diplomat and former Director, Institute of Strategic Studies, Research & Analysis (ISSRA), National Defence University, Islamabad. In a career with Pakistan Foreign Service spanning over 35 years, he has held a number of key assignments: Desk Officer on Iran; Political Officer in Moscow and later as a key officer on the Soviet desk in Islamabad; he was

Urvashi Butalia is co-founder of Kali for Women, India’s first feminist publishing house, and now runs Zubaan, an imprint of Kali. She is an independent researcher and writer, concerned mostly with issues relating to gender. Among her best known publications are the award winning history of Partition, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India, which has

Maikan Wahid Baloch is a student of Inter Arts General Group, an artist in Rock the band (theatre group formed by her sister Mahin), and a female footballer from Lyari (she plays in midfielder position). She has participated in many theatre plays and has been appreciated for her performances. She was nominated for the Pride of Sindh Award 2019 by

Hoori Noorani runs the Karachi publishing house Maktaba-e-Danyal, which she inherited from her late father Malik Noorani on his death. Following her early education in Karachi, her love for literature and linguistics led her towards a masters degree in philology, with a major in Russian and World literature, from the People’s Friendship University in Moscow. Upon her return to Karachi

A veteran Pakistani diplomat, Shahid M. Amin spent 39 years in the Pakistan Foreign Service (1958–1997). He was Deputy Agent of Pakistan in the Rann of Kutch Arbitration Tribunal in Geneva. Since retirement from Foreign Service, Shahid Amin has written extensively for newspapers, is a well-known analyst on national television on foreign policy and national affairs. Since 1999, he has