About

Zehra Naqvi is a writer, educator, and Rhodes Scholar. The Knot of My Tongue: Poems and Prose (McClelland & Stewart, Penguin Random House Canada) is her debut poetry collection. Her writing has been nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature, Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and Raymond Souster Award. She was awarded the 2021 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. Her poem ‘forgetting urdu’ was the winner of Room’s 2016 Poetry Contest. She has written and edited for various publications internationally. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Room, The New Quarterly, DAWN, The Minola Review, Living Hyphen, Contemporary Verse 2, PRISM international,The Capilano Review, and elsewhere.

Her work has been commissioned by UNHCR and Amnesty International. She has guest lectured at the University of Victoria, Queen’s University, and Stanford University.

Zehra is also the founder and director of The Estuary Institute, which offers interdisciplinary community-based programming in the liberal and creative arts for lifelong learners seeking to better understand the pressing issues facing our planet. 

Zehra has a BA Hons. in English and Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She also holds an MSc in Migration Studies and an MSc in Social Anthropology from Oxford University, where she researched transnational Islamic feminisms and globalized Islam. Currently, her research is focused on social and political ecology and the history of science and technology.

Zehra was born in Karachi and raised on unceded Coast Salish territories (outside Vancouver, BC).