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American author From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fatima Farheen Mirza Ahmed (born April 10, 1991) is an American novelist best known for her novel A Place for Us (2018),[1] which was a New York Times Best Seller.[2] She was also honored by the National Book Award Foundation as a "5 Under 35" Honoree in 2020.
Fatima Farheen Mirza | |
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Born | California, U.S. | April 10, 1991
Education | |
Occupation | Novelist |
Spouse | |
Website | www |
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Mirza was born and raised in California.[3] Her parents are both of Indian descent; her mother grew up to a British Indian family in Birmingham, while her father immigrated to the United States from Hyderabad.[4] She grew up in an observant Muslim family.[5] Mirza attended the University of California, Riverside, where she pursued medical studies at first but made a career shift to creative writing as an undergraduate.[3] She later graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop[3][6][7] and received the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship.[8] She has taught at the University of Iowa and New York University.[9]
Mirza submitted the book manuscript for her debut novel A Place for Us for publication in 2017.[10] The 400-page novel[11] was the first book to be published by actor Sarah Jessica Parker's new imprint in collaboration with Crown Publishing Group, called SJP for Hogarth.[12] A Place for Us took Mirza eight years to write,[10] and explores the shifting dynamics in a Muslim immigrant family living in the States after having immigrated from Hyderabad, India. The novel was reviewed by the New York Times,[13] the Los Angeles Review of Books,[14] and The Washington Post.[15] The book was a 2018 bestseller,[2] and was named among the best books of 2018 by The Washington Post,[16] Buzzfeed,[17] and People magazine.[18] She has been a guest on a number of podcasts celebrating her writing career such as Riff Raff,[19] Books with Jen,[20] Shalwar Kameez Dreams[21] and Bridge India’s Voices.[22]
Mirza was nominated by author Tommy Orange as an honoree for the National Book Award Foundation's 5 under 35.[23]
Mirza married British actor Riz Ahmed in 2020 after meeting at a coffee shop in Brooklyn in 2018.[24][25][26]
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