Sharbari Zohra Ahmed

Last updated
Sharbari Zohra Ahmed
Born
Dhaka, Bangladesh
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater New York University
Occupations
  • Writer
  • professor
Notable work Quantico

Sharbari Zohra Ahmed (born April 5, 1971) is a Bangladeshi American writer. [1] She is known for being a writer on the ABC thriller Quantico , which made her one of the first Bangladeshi women to write for American network television. [2] Ahmed has also published a book, fictional stories, and plays. Additionally, Ahmed is a professor at Manhatanville College's MFA program.

Contents

Early life

Sharbari Zohra Ahmed was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh on April 5, 1971. Her family fled Bangladesh when she was three weeks old due to the Bangladesh Liberation War, during which her father was targeted for execution by the Pakistani Army. She went to New York University for her master's degree in creative writing. [3] She lived in Ethiopia for a while, her story "Pepsi" is set in Ethiopia and is about a daughter of a Bangladeshi diplomat trying to fit in the country. [4]

Career

Ahmed was on the writing team for the first season of the ABC show Quantico , making her the first woman of Bangladeshi origin to write for a network show. [5] She wrote a play, Raisins Not Virgins, which was adapted into a short film. [3] Raisins Not Virgins was about being a young female American Muslim trying to make sense of her Islamic identity. She wrote the play in 2003 and adapted it for the stage. She produced the play and acted in it. In 2008, in the Tribeca Film Festival it was selected for the Tribeca All Access programme. Her book, The Ocean of Mrs. Nagai, was released at the Hay Festival Dhaka in 2013. She is on the faculty of the MFA program at Manhattanville College. [4] She defended Indian actor, Soha Ali Khan, after she was criticized by Muslim extremists for wearing a sari, which the extremist deemed un-Islamic. [6] She presented in the AWP conference on postcolonial literature in Bangladesh in 2016. [7] She is working on a new project called The Line with Ikhtisad Ahmed. [8] Her fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including The Gettysburg Review , Painted Bride Quarterly and the Asian Pacific American Journal. In 2017, she adapted Rickshaw Girl by Mitali Bose Perkins (Scholastic) for the screen. The film is produced by Sleeperwave Films and directed by Amitabh Reza Chowdhury. In 2023, Ahmed worked as a producer on the limited-series adaptation of Nadeem Zaman's The Inheritors, which is a modern retelling of 'The Great Gatsby' set in Dhaka. [5]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barisal Division</span> Division of Bangladesh

Barisal Division is one of the eight administrative divisions of Bangladesh. Located in the south-central part of the country, it has an area of 13,644.85 km2 (5,268.31 sq mi), and a population of 9,100,102 at the 2011 Census. It is the least populous Division in Bangladesh. It is bounded by Dhaka Division on the north, the Bay of Bengal on the south, Chittagong Division on the east and Khulna Division on the west. The administrative capital, Barisal city, lies in the Padma River delta on an offshoot of the Arial Khan River. Barisal division is criss-crossed by numerous rivers that earned it the nickname Dhan-Nodi-Khal, Ei tin-e Borishal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kazi Nazrul Islam</span> Bengali poet, writer and musician (1899–1976)

Kazi Nazrul Islam, also known as the Rebel Poet, was a popular Bengali poet, writer and lyrist born in Churulia of Bengal Presidency who spent his final years in Bangladesh and received Bangladeshi citizenship after the independence of Bangladesh. He was a poet, writer, musician, and is the national poet of Bangladesh. Nazrul produced a large body of poetry, music, messages, novels, and stories with themes that included equality, justice, anti-imperialism, humanity, rebellion against oppression and religious devotion. Nazrul Islam's activism for political and social justice as well as writing a poem titled as "Bidrohī", meaning "the rebel" in Bengali, earned him the title of "Bidrohī Kôbi". His compositions form the avant-garde music genre of Nazrul Gīti.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taslima Nasrin</span> Poet, columnist, novelist

Taslima Nasrin is a Bangladeshi writer, physician, feminist, secular humanist, and activist. She is known for her writing on women's oppression and criticism of religion; some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. She has also been blacklisted and banished from the Bengal region, both from Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bengalis</span> Ethnic group native to Bangladesh and India

Bengalis, also rendered as Bangalee, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group originating from and culturally affiliated with the Bengal region of South Asia. The current population is divided between the sovereign country Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, Barak Valley, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Jharkhand and part of Meghalaya and Manipur. Most speak Bengali, a language from the Indo-Aryan language family. Sub-section 2 of Article 6 of the Constitution of Bangladesh states, "The people of Bangladesh shall be known as Bengalis as a nation and as Bangladeshis as citizens."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ahmed Sofa</span> Bangladeshi writer, thinker, novelist, poet, and public intellectual

Ahmed Sofa was a Bangladeshi writer, thinker, novelist, poet, philosopher and public intellectual. Sofa is considered by many, including National Professor Abdur Razzaq and Salimullah Khan, to be the most important Bengali Muslim writer after Mir Mosharraf Hossain and Kazi Nazrul Islam. A writer by occupation, Sofa wrote 18 non-fiction books, 8 novels, 4 collections of poems, 2 collections of short stories, and several books in other genres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Culture of Bengal</span> Overview of the Bengali culture

The culture of Bengal defines the cultural heritage of the Bengali people native to eastern regions of the Indian subcontinent, mainly what is today Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura, where they form the dominant ethnolinguistic group and the Bengali language is the official and primary language. Bengal has a recorded history of 1,400 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zohra Begum Kazi</span> 1st Bengali Muslim Physician

Zohra Begum Kazi was the first Bengali Muslim female physician. She was awarded Tamgha-e-Pakistan (1964), Begum Rokeya Padak (2002) and Ekushey Padak (2008).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mohammad Mozammel Huq</span> Indian Bengali-language poet

Mohammad Mozammel Huq was a Bengali-language poet, novelist, magistrate and educationist. His writings were said to have been inspired by a "Muslim renaissance".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islam in West Bengal</span>

According to the 2011 census, West Bengal has over 24.6 million Muslims, making up 27% of the state's population. The vast majority of Muslims in West Bengal are ethnic native Bengali Muslims, numbering around over 22 million and comprising 24.1% of the state population. There also exists an Immigrants Urdu-speaking Muslim community numbering 2.6 million, constituting 2.9% of the state population and mostly resides in Urban areas of the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Theatre in Bangladesh</span> Theatre in Bangladesh

Theatre in Bangladesh is believed to have its origin in the 4th century AD in the form of Sanskrit drama. The conquest of Bengal by the Gupta dynasty led the ingress of the northern Indian culture into the ancient Bangladeshi culture which eventually introduced the tradition of theatre in Bangladesh. At present, apart from the Sanskrit theatre, the influence of the European theatre and the indigenous folk culture can also be seen in the theatre art of Bangladesh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bengali Muslims</span> Bengalis who follows Islam

Bengali Muslims are adherents of Islam who ethnically, linguistically and genealogically identify as Bengalis. Comprising about two-thirds of the global Bengali population, they are the second-largest ethnic group among Muslims after Arabs. Bengali Muslims make up the majority of Bangladesh's citizens, and are the largest minority in the Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bonya Ahmed</span> American-Bangladeshi blogger and activist

Rafida Bonya Ahmed is a Bangladeshi-American who is simultaneously a writer, free-spirited blogger and humanitarian activist, and a former IT official in the United States. In 2020, she founded the educational channels Think Bangla and Think English on YouTube.

Attacks by fundamentalists in Bangladesh refers to a period of turbulence in Bangladesh between 2013 and 2016 where attacks on a number of secularist and atheist writers, bloggers, and publishers in Bangladesh; foreigners; homosexuals; and religious minorities such as Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and Ahmadis were seen as having attacked Islam and the Prophet Muhammad with many killed by Muslim extremists in retaliation. By 2 July 2016 a total of 48 people, including 20 foreign nationals, were killed in such attacks. These attacks were largely blamed on extremist groups such as Ansarullah Bangla Team and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The Bangladeshi government was criticized for its response to the attacks, which included charging and jailing some of the secularist bloggers for allegedly defaming some religious groups; or hurting the religious sentiments of different religious groups; or urging the bloggers to flee overseas. This strategy was seen by some as pandering to hard line elements within Bangladesh's Muslim majority population. About 89% of the population in Bangladesh is Sunni Muslim. The government's eventual crackdown in June 2016 was also criticized for its heavy-handedness, as more than 11,000 people were arrested in a little more than a week.

<i>Islams Non-Believers</i> TV series or program

Islam's Non-Believers is a 2016 documentary produced by Fuuse Films, and filmed and directed by Deeyah Khan. The film documents the lives and experiences of ex-Muslims: people who have left Islam to become atheists, and who often face discrimination, harassment, ostracism and violence for leaving Islam, both in the UK and abroad. The documentary was first shown on the ITV's current affairs series Exposure.

Leila Arjumand Banu was a Bangladeshi singer and social activist.

Begum Badrunnessa Ahmed was a Bangladeshi social activist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dilruba Ahmed</span> American poet

Dilruba Ahmed is an American writer, educator, and poet of Bangladeshi descent. Her work was selected by Major Jackson for The Best American Poetry 2019.

Dobhashi is a neologism used to refer to a historical register of the Bengali language which borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It became the most customary form for composing puthi poetry predominantly using the traditional Bengali alphabet. However, Dobhashi literature has also been produced in the Sylhet Nagri script, as well as in the modified Arabic scripts of Chittagong and Nadia. The standardisation of the modern Bengali language during the colonial period, eventually led to its decline.

References

  1. ↑ "A conversation with Muslim neighbors, hosted by Darien's St. Luke's Parish is Tuesday". Darien Times. 27 March 2017. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  2. ↑ Ahmed, Sharbari Zohra. "How I went from being a novelist to a writer on Priyanka Chopra's 'Quantico'". Scroll.in. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 "'Quantico' Writer Sharbari Ahmed On Perseverance, Identity, and Life in the Writers Room". NBC News. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "A writing sensation". The Daily Star. 22 March 2014. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  5. 1 2 "Sharbari Zohra Ahmed: The Bangladeshi-origin author making strides against all odds". The Business Standard. 2023-07-03. Retrieved 2023-07-12.
  6. ↑ "It's irrational to call Soha 'un-Islamic' because of her sari post, says author Abul Bashar". The Times of India. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  7. ↑ Ahmed, Sharbari Zohra. "Searching for a home in the world: Why Bangladesh's fiction writers are isolated". Scroll.in. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
  8. ↑ "A sneak peek into the life of Quantico's Bangladeshi writer". Dhaka Tribune. Retrieved 26 November 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.