Shazia Hafiz Ramji

twitter: @Shazia_R

Shazia Hafiz Ramji is a Kenyan Canadian writer of South Asian, Persian, and Irish descent. She lives on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver, BC), where she works as an editor, freelance writer, and creative writing instructor. Shazia is the author of Port of Being, a finalist for the 2019 Vancouver Book Award, BC Book Prizes (Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and winner of the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She was named as a “writer to watch” by the CBC and her poetry and prose have been nominated for the 2020 Pushcart Prizes.

Shazia is currently working on an autofictional novel that spans from the colonial era of British India to the present time. The novel traces her family histories and explores intergenerational trauma, family secrets, Muslim diasporas, and her own experiences with addiction and recovery. When she’s not writing, reading, or running, she makes electronic music and field recordings.

Some of her favourite writers are W.G. Sebald, Maggie Nelson, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Esi Edugyan, David Chariandy, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Michael Ondaatje. She loves poetry by Kaveh Akbar, Fatimah Asghar, Juliane Okot Bitek, Anne Michaels, Dionne Brand, and Tomas Transtrõmer. Currently she is reading This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangaremba and is really loving it.

Shazia’s poetry is forthcoming in EVENT magazine, Canthius, and They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets. She is a columnist for Open Book and an editor for Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis, forthcoming in Oct 2020.