Bina Shah
Encyclopedia
Early life and Education
The eldest of three children, Shah was born in Karachi to a Sindhi family. She obtained a B.A. in Psychology from Wellesley College, USA and a M.Ed in Educational Technology from the HarvardHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
Graduate School of Education, USA.
According to Alhamra.com, "She was born in Karachi but spent her early years in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and completed her later education in Massachusetts".
Career
She was editor of the country's Internet magazine, SPIDER. She has worked as a journalist and is well known for her writing on the South Asian Web site Chowk. Shah also contributes op-ed pieces for the Dawn Group of Newspapers, and features and book reviews for The Friday Times.Literary career
Shah is the author of six books. Her latest, A Season For Martyrs was published in Italy by Newton Compton as Il Bambino Che Credeva Nella Liberta in March 2010. For this novel, Shah was awarded the Premio Internazionale in the Un Mondi di Bambini category of the Almalfi Coast Literary Festival in July 2010 for translated fiction.Her first book, a volume of short stories called Animal Medicine was published in 2000. Her novel, Where They Dream in Blue was published by Alhamra in 2001. A second novel, The 786 Cybercafé was published by Alhamra in 2004. In 2005, "The Optimist", a short story written by Bina was published in an anthology called And the World Changed (Women Unlimited/OUP); an essay called "A Love Affair with Lahore" was published in an anthology edited by Bapsi Sidhwa called City of Sin and Splendour - Writings on Lahore (Penguin India - Pakistani title Beloved City - OUP). In 2007 Alhamra published her second collection of short stories, Blessings.
Shah's English language novel Slum Child was published in India by Tranquebar, an imprint of Westland-Tata, in 2010. An Italian-language version was also published in Italy by Newton Compton in March 2009 under the title La Bambina Che Non Poteva Sognare, where it reached number 3 on the paperback bestseller list, and sold over 20,000 copies. It will be published in Spanish by Grijalbo, an imprint of Random House Mondadori, in April 2011
Shah is represented by The Ampersand Agency, a UK-based literary agency.