Muneeza Shamsie

Muneeza Shamsie (nee Habibullah) received the Sitara-e-Imtiaz in 2025, for her contribution to literature. She is author of a literary history Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of Pakistani Literature in English (Oxford University Press 2017) and has recently published her fourth anthology In the New Century: An Anthology of Pakistani Literature in English (Oxford University Press, 2024);  her third anthology And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women (Women Unlimited, 2005) was developed into American edition (Feminist Press, 2008), which received the IPPY Gold and Foreword Bronze prizes in the United States. She is an Area Editor for The Literary Encyclopedia and the Bibliographic Representative (Pakistan) for  Literature, Critique and Empire Today (formerly The Journal of Commonwealth Literature ).  She serves on the international advisory board of The Journal of Postcolonial Writing and has edited its special issues 52.2 (2016) “Al Andalus”; and 47.2. (2011) “Beyond Geography: Literature, Politics and Violence in Pakistan”. She is on the National Advisory Board of the International Centre for Pakistani Writing in English (ICPWE), Kinnaird College, Lahore; she is also on the advisory committee of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and served on its 2013 jury. She was Regional Chairperson (Eurasia) of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize from 2009–2011 and has served on several literary juries in Pakistan too, including The Patras Bokhari Award, the KLF-Getz Pharma Award and the inaugural Zeenat Haroon Rashid Writing for Women. Shamsie lives in Karachi, has contributed essays to many academic publication and writes for the Pakistani press.