Raza Naeem

Raza Naeem is an award‑winning Pakistani writer, researcher, dramatic reader, and translator. He studied Political Economy at the University of Leeds (UK) and Middle Eastern History at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (USA). He is the recipient of the prestigious 2013–2014 Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship in the UK for his translation and interpretive work on Saadat Hasan Manto, and was a runner‑up/finalist for the inaugural 2017 Jawad Memorial Prize for Urdu–English Translation (India) for his translation of “Bahaar” (Spring), a short story by Abdullah Hussein. He has written the foreword to the reissued edition of Abdullah Hussein’s classic Partition novel The Weary Generations (HarperCollins India, 2016). His work has been widely anthologized nationally and internationally, and translated into several South Asian languages, including Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, and most recently Gurmukhi (Punjabi). It has also been selected for presentation at major international literary festivals such as the Winnipeg International Writers Festival (Canada) and the Lucknow and Delhi Literature Festivals (India). In August 2024, he was selected as an emerging translator from Pakistan to attend the pioneering, fully funded, week‑long South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) Summer School in Colombo, mentored by acclaimed Urdu–Hindi translator Daisy Rockwell—one of only 41 translators chosen from around the world. Based in Lahore, he serves as the President of the Progressive Writers Association (Anjuman Taraqqi Pasand Mussanifeen). He was recently awarded the prestigious 12th Anjum Roomani Pride of Performance Award for Literary Services for 2024–25. He is currently working on a manuscript on Maulana Hasrat Mohani for his 150th birth anniversary, as well as English translations of legendary Progressive writer Khatir Ghaznavi’s Urdu novella Phool Aur Patthar (for his birth centenary) and acclaimed contemporary Urdu feminist poet Ishrat Afreen’s forthcoming poetic collection Jang Ki Diary.