Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001) was born in New Delhi and grew up Muslim in Kashmir, taking degrees at the University of Kashmir and the University of Delhi before immigrating to the United States in 1976. He earned a PhD in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1984 and an MFA from the University of Arizona in 1985. His collections include The Half-Inch Himalayas (1987), A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office (Ravi Dayal, 1997; W. W. Norton, 1998), and Rooms Are Never Finished (Norton, 2002), a National Book Award finalist. He translated Faiz Ahmed Faiz and edited Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English.
