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Muneeza Shamsie is a Pakistani writer, critic, bibliographer and freelance journalist. She was born in Lahore,Pakistan into a literary-minded family, and was educated in England. She is daughter of the writer Jahanara Habibullah. She grew up with a strong social and literary conscience stemming from the political and feminist views of Begum Inam Habibullah, her paternal grandmother.
Shamsie lives in Karachi and is the Regional Chairperson (Europe and South Asia) of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for 2010 and 2011. She is Guest Editor of a Special Pakistan Issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing (forthcoming May 2011). She has also contributed to several scholarly publications including Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Archiv fur der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, Commonwealth Essays and Studies and the online The Literary Encyclopedia, and The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century Fiction.
She is a regular contributor to the Dawn newspaper, Newsline and She magazines on literary affairs. Since 1982, her freelance feature writing has covered diverse topics, from archaeology to feminism, but literature has always been her main focus. She is also on the editorial board of Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies.
Shamsie has spoken about Pakistani English literature at many literary forums, conferences and seminars. Her short fiction has appeared in various anthologies and The Toronto Review and Nephra. She is a founding member of a Karachi hospital the Kidney Centre and Life member of the Association of Children with Emotional and Learning Problems (ACELP, where she also taught music and mime at ACELP's school, as a volunteer for seven years.
Shamsie's most acclaimed works are her compilation of the works of Pakistani writers who are writing in English. The American edition of her third anthology And The World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women was published with an expanded introduction and new headwords by The Feminist Press at CUNY and won in the United States and the 2009 IPPY (Independent Publisher of the Year) Gold Award and the 2008 Foreword Magazine Book of The Year Bronze Award - both for the best anthology by an independent publisher.
She is the mother of the prominent young Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie and the children's writer, Saman Shamsie.
Books
§ A Dragonfly in the Sun: An Anthology of Pakistani Writing in English (1997)
§ Leaving Home: Towards A New Millennium: A Collection of English Prose by Pakistani Writers (2001)
§ And The World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women (2005
§ And The World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women (2008) (US edition)
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