Tahira Naqvi grew up in Lahore, Pakistan. She is a translator, writer, and Clinical Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University where she teaches Urdu language and literature. She has translated into English works of Saadat Hasan Manto, Khadija Mastoor, Hajra Masroor, and the majority of works by Ismat Chughtai. She also writes fiction and has published two collections of short stories titled, consecutively, Attar of Roses and Other Stories of Pakistan, and Dying in a Strange Country, and a novel, The History Teacher of Lahore.