Water and place in Pakistani literature

Join us in exploring landscape and water in Pakistani literature at SOAS. Award-winning Pakistani writers, Farah Ali, Noreen Masud, Shandana Minhas and Yasmin Whittaker-Khan, will be discussing their work in relation to our changing world – with Pakistan ranked the fifth most vulnerable country to climate change.

The event will be chaired by Anandi Rao, lecturer in South Asian literature and film.

About the speakers

Farah Ali is a writer and publisher. Farah’s debut novel, The River, The Land is published by Dzanc books, and her acclaimed short-story collection People Want to Live was published by McSweeneys. Her work has been anthologised in the Pushcart Prize, the Best Small Fictions, Shenandoah, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. She is the cofounder and fiction editor at Lakeer. She lives in London where she writes and edits.

Noreen Masud is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. Her academic monograph, Stevie Smith and the Aphorism: Hard Language won the MSA First Book Award 2023 and the University English Prize in 2024. Her memoir-travelogue, A Flat Place, was shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction; The Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Trust Young Writer of the Year; the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2024.

Shandana Minhas is an award-winning Pakistani writer from Karachi who now lives in London. Her work has featured in literary magazines and newspapers, been adapted for stage and screen, and translated into Italian and Estonian. She is the author of the novels Tunnel Vision, Survival Tips for Lunatics, Daddy’s Boy and Rafina. Her next book, Ferdowsnama, will be published by Penguin India in 2025. 

Anandi Rao (she/her) is a lecturer in South Asian Studies at SOAS, University of London, where she teaches South Asian literature and film. Her research has been published widely, including the journals: South Asian Review and Studies in South Asian Film and Media.

Yasmin Whittaker-Khan is a writer, director, presenter, and social entrepreneur. Her award-winning plays include: ‘The Rivers Daughter’ a British Council gender ecologies project, which toured in Pakistan and the UK; ‘Reshaam’, ‘In No Sense’, ‘Bells’, ‘Twelve’ and ‘Porcelain Dolls’. She is a co-director of the Qisah International Film festival and the founder and director of Insaan Culture Club. 

Contact

• Organiser: SOAS Library in association with Insaan Stories
• Contact: librarycomms@soas.ac.uk

Image credit: Sajid Khan via Unsplash