Nazia Akhtar is an Assistant Professor at the Human Sciences Research Centre, International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad (India), where she teaches courses in Indian and Russian literatures. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Charles Wallace India Trust, the New India Foundation, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude to conduct her research. Her first book, Bibi’s Room: Hyderabadi Women and Twentieth-Century Urdu Prose, was published in 2022 to academic and popular acclaim. Her second book, The Deccan Sun: Essays and Stories by Zeenath Sajida, consists of translations of Urdu writings and was published in 2025. Nazia has received a commendation from the jury of the Jawad Memorial Prize (2021) for her translation of Zeenath Sajida’s Urdu short story “Chhotam Jaan.” Her short story “The Letter” was shortlisted for the Hope Prize 2025 and has just been published by Simon and Schuster in an anthology with the other shortlisted and winning entries.