Literature buffs...this evening is specially for you!

Published in February 2025, Muneeza Shamsie’s anthology 'In the New Century' follows the twentieth century’s 'A Dragonfly in the Sun'. It is a rich and comprehensive feast of various genres of writing- both prose and poetry- from Pakistani writers in English here and in the diaspora.

Curated by Fizza Hasan and Ilona Yusuf, this evening introduces the book and its editor, and showcases a set of readings, featuring both prose and poetry.

In memoriam...

Khwaja Shahid Hosain was- in various chapters of his life- a scholar, bureaucrat, poet, editor, and antiquarian bookstore owner! In his career as an editor, he set 'Pakistani English' poetry on the map through the publication of two anthologies- First Voices and Pieces of Eight.

The evening will feature conversation between his daughter Mehreen Hosain, renowned Urdu poet Iftikhar Arif, and moderator Ilona Yusuf, along with readings of his poems .

Audience participation is welcome!

Apart from his contribution in the field of literature, Khwaja Shahid Hosain in his professional capacity served as DG Pakistan Broadcasting, Director Programmes/ General Manager Operations PTV ,MD :NAFDEC, Federal Secretary Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism & as

Pakistan's Ambassador to UNESCO.

As the world marks 250 years of Jane Austen, the Asian Study Group celebrates her enduring legacy with a special evening of readings and reflections! The event will feature a discussion with lovers of Austen's work, and why it resonates with readers in Pakistan today.

We will place excerpts from Austen’s novels side by side with selections from 'Austenistan', a collection of Pakistani short stories inspired by her work, to explore how her themes of love, honour, and society still resonate in South Asia today. Dramatised readings by actors from Theatre Wallay will be a special feature of the evening.

The event may also feature a possible collaboration with the Jane Austen Society of Pakistan, bringing an added local perspective to this cross-cultural literary conversation.

Join us for an evening of readings from Bapsi Sidhwa's works, and an overview of her life and times through shared stories and recollections, video clips, and conversation between academic Dr. Aroosa Kanwal , journalist and editor Amna R. Ali, and poet and editor Ilona Yusuf.

Bapsi Sidhwa (1938-2024)is a celebrated and pioneering Pakistani English language novelist, who received global recognition for her novels, The Crow Eaters, Ice Candy Man, An American Brat, and The Bride. Her writing put a spotlight on the Subcontinent’s 1947 Partition, the Parsi community in Pakistan, and women’s issues and experiences in Pakistani society.

In conversation with Zahid Hussain

Dialogue with History, Zahid Hussain’s latest book, is a compilation of thirty nine interviews with infuential leaders, local and international, who shaped the world in the last decades. Rehana Hakim, former editor or Newsline magazine, writes, “ Perceptive, probing and provocative, Zahid Hussain’s conversations with the movers and shakers of the world’s political, economic and social landscape read like an interview with history…Among the interviewees are luminaries from neighbouring India, Iran and Afghanistan (Rajiv Gandhi, Bani Sadr, Massoud Rajavi, Hamid Karzai, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. From Pakistan, there is an exclusive interview with the indomitable Bacha Khan and detailed conversations with Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pervez Musharraf, Dr. Mahbubul Haq, Asma Jahangir and others.”
Award- winning journalist and author Zahid Hussain began his career with Herald and Newsline in Karachi before becoming a correspondent of Times of London and the Wall Street Journal. He has authored several books including 'Frontline Pakistan', 'The Scorpion's Tail' and 'No Win War- The Paradox of US- Pakistan relations in Afghanistan's Shadow’ and ’Face to Face with Benazir. Dialogue with History is his latest publication.

In conversation with Umber Khairi: Baya Benhassine

In her first novel, a taut newsroom thriller, “Akbar in Wonderland”, Umber delves into Akbar's life- a journalist in 1990's Karachi -who gets caught up with politics and media intrigues….

Umber Khairi - a 'Karachite’ herself- is a writer, columnist, former BBC producer, and co-founder of the independent, journalist-owned magazine ‘Newsline’. A graduate of Princeton University, she has worked as a journalist in Pakistan and the UK since the 1980s, and was a producer and radio broadcaster at the BBC World Service in London- for almost two decades. Her weekly column, ‘UK Calling’, has featured in The News on Sunday since 1998 and she contributes occasionally to other publications including ‘Dawn’, ‘Naya Daur’ and ‘The Circuit.’

She now runs a Lecture Series on journalism in partnership with the IBA's Center for Excellence in Journalism (CEJ).

'Poetry in English from Pakistan, A 21st Century Anthology' by Alhamra Publishing, showcases the work of sixty eight contemporary Pakistani poets writing in English. In this volume with its extensive representation of contemporary local and diaspora poets, readers will discern the changing trajectory in metre, rhythm, tone and theme of this often-neglected genre. The collection, featuring poems written from the year 2000 to date, moves from senior, established voices to young, emerging poets. The editor’s notes at the end of the book give novice readers a rough guide to English poetry in Pakistan, which existed from the country’s birth (and before, as part of the Subcontinent).

Readers familiar with the genre will note a recent return to traditional poetic form, a movement initiated by diaspora poets, now taken up by the local writing community. The large representation of the former group is testament to the scale of migrations westwards from Pakistan.

In scope and size, this twenty first century anthology endeavours to give students and readers of poetry an overview of the poetic scene and documentation of work which does not always reach publication!

'Poetry in English from Pakistan, A 21st Century Anthology' by Alhamra Publishing, showcases the work of sixty eight contemporary Pakistani poets writing in English. In this volume with its extensive representation of contemporary local and diaspora poets, readers will discern the changing trajectory in metre, rhythm, tone and theme of this often-neglected genre. The collection, featuring poems written from the year 2000 to date, moves from senior, established voices to young, emerging poets. The editor’s notes at the end of the book give novice readers a rough guide to English poetry in Pakistan, which existed from the country’s birth (and before, as part of the Subcontinent).

Readers familiar with the genre will note a recent return to traditional poetic form, a movement initiated by diaspora poets, now taken up by the local writing community. The large representation of the former group is testament to the scale of migrations westwards from Pakistan.

In scope and size, this twenty first century anthology endeavours to give students and readers of poetry an overview of the poetic scene and documentation of work which does not always reach publication!

'Between Africa, America and Pakistan, Heart Tantrums and Brain Tumors' is a unique story of identity and belonging, misogyny and motherhood, patriarchy and partnership. Its searing honesty and political passion reveal one woman's battle to redefine the rules--by fighting for, and sometimes with, the man she loves...

When Aisha Sarwari moved to America as a young woman, she set out to create her own identity and story. Born in Uganda, she had never lived in South Asia, yet struggled to reconcile the cultural expectation to be a "good Muslim girl" with her desire for equality and acceptance.
After she met Yasser, a Pakistani law student, they returned to their ancestral country and married. Little did they know that a brain tumor would become a near-lethal third wheel in their relationship. The cancer gnawed at Yasser's personality, provoking aggressive outbursts. Was the illness still the explanation for his violence, or had it become an excuse? Aisha began to see their marriage within a bigger picture--of an oppressive society, and of the tug between feminist principles and personal happiness...

'EVEN WHEN WE LEAVE THEM, OUR CITIES NEVER LEAVE US ...'

After her Dutch mother’s death, Sorayya Khan confronts her grief by revisiting their relationship, her parents’ lives, and her own Pakistani-Dutch heritage in a multicultural memoir that unfolds over seven cities and three continents.

We Take Our Cities with Us ushers us from Khan’s childhood independence forged at her grandparents’ home in Lahore; to her adolescence in Pakistan’s new capital, Islamabad; to Syracuse and Ithaca, New York, where Khan finds her footing as the mother of young, brown sons in post-9/11 America; to her birthplace, Vienna, where her parents die; and finally to Amsterdam and Maastricht, the cities of her mother’s conflicted youth.

In Khan’s gripping telling of her immigrant experience, she shows us what it is to raise children and lose parents in worlds other than your own. Drawing on family history, geopolitics, and art in this stunning story of loss, identity, and rediscovery, Khan beautifully illuminates the complexities of our evolving global world and its most important constant: love...

·With grace and power, this mesmerizing memoir swirls from continent to continent, decade to decade, through a journey of identity, memory, loyalty, and loss. Part map, part family tree, We Take Our Cities with Us provides an intimate glimpse into what it means to make a home in the global modern age. Sorayya Khan is an exquisite storyteller—Eleanor Henderson

·We Take Our Cities with Us is a memoir of uncommon delicacy and emotional force: Sorayya Khan illuminates her hybrid legacy and international upbringing, braiding the multiple threads of her complex identity. This is an intimate, beautiful, and lasting book—Claire Messud

·This is a rich, wise, deeply moving reflection on cities that are both home to migrants and themselves migrants, having morphed into barely recognizable versions of their former selves. The ghosts of other times and places haunt the characters in this memoir. Sometimes that haunting is a reminder of what has been lost forever, but sometimes it can also be a consolation: even as our passports root us in one place, our curiosities, loves, and longings can make unexpected connections across supposedly insurmountable borders.—Jonathan Gil Harris

The programme will include short readings of We Take Our Cities with Us, and Sorayya will join us with pre-recorded remarks on her journey from novelist to memoirist and will offer us a glimpse into a writer's research process.

• Sorayya Khan is the author of We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir and three novels: Noor, Five Queen's Road, and City of Spies, which won the Best International Fiction Book Award at the Sharjah International Book Fair.