Pakistani writer to read from her work

Fiction writer and translator Tahira Naqvi will read from her recent work and answer questions about her writing at 8 p.m. Monday, March 17, in the Benjamin E. Mays Center, 95 Russell Street. Sponsored by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation, the public is invited to attend the reading free of charge.

Originally from Lahore, Pakistan, Naqvi and her family have lived in the United States for more than two decades.  Many of her humorous yet poignant stories describe the everyday lives of women in Pakistan and of Pakistanis living in the United States.

Naqvi’s short fiction has appeared in journals and is widely anthologized. The author of two short story collections, Attar of Roses and Other Stories of Pakistan (Three Continents Press, 1997) and Dying in a Strange Country (TSAR, 2001), she has just completed her first novel.

Naqvi is committed to translating work by such writers from Urdu into English. She hopes that South Asian women writers will become more accessible to Western readers. Her translations include several works by the renowned Indian writer Ismat Chughtai, and a collection of stories by well-known Pakistani writer Khadija Mastur.

She teaches English at Westchester Community College and Urdu at NYU and Columbia University.