Sameena Nazir
Writer
Sameena Nazir is one of the most important voices in contemporary Urdu fiction, as well as an accomplished theatre, film and TV actress, director, playwright and producer. Her first collection of short stories, Kallo, was published in March 2021 to widespread acclaim for its frank and searing portrayal of desire, sexuality, loss and heartbreak and migrations across manmade political borders of all kinds. Kallo included both short stories and one-act plays, demonstrating Nazir’s experimentation with a wide range of genres and forms, as well as her work across Urdu prose, cinema, television and theatre. Her stories are populated with characters and dialects from Karachi, Hyderabad in India, Punjabi and many others, reflecting the remarkably expansive world that they inhabit, even while being deeply local. Her first novel, Siyah Heeray [Black Diamonds] was published in 2023, and weaves a complex saga of migration, the slave trade and neocolonialism across India, Pakistan and the Western edges of the continent of Africa. Several of Nazir’s works have been translated into popular telefilms and stage adaptations, some of which she has directed and acted in herself.
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