Fatima Farheen Mirza
Mirza in 2019
Born	(1991-04-10)April 10, 1991 (age 34) California, U.S.
Education	University of California (BA) University of Iowa (MFA)
Occupation	Novelist
Spouse	Riz Ahmed ​ (m. 2020)​
Signature

Fatima Farheen Mirza Ahmed (born April 10, 1991) is an American novelist best known for her novelA Place for Us (2018),^[1] which was aNew York Times Best Seller.^[2] She was also honored by theNational Book Award Foundation as a "5 Under 35" Honoree in 2020.

Mirza was born and raised in California.^[3] Her parents are both of Indian descent; her mother grew up to a British Indian family inBirmingham, while her father immigrated to the United States fromHyderabad.^[4] She grew up in an observant Muslim family.^[5] Mirza attended theUniversity of California, Riverside, where she pursued medical studies at first but made a career shift to creative writing as an undergraduate.^[3] She later graduated from theIowa Writers' Workshop^[3][6][7] and received theMichener-Copernicus Fellowship.^[8] She has taught at theUniversity of Iowa andNew York University.^[9]

Mirza submitted the book manuscript for her debut novelA Place for Us for publication in 2017.^[10] The 400-page novel^[11] was the first book to be published by actorSarah Jessica Parker's new imprint in collaboration withCrown Publishing Group, called SJP for Hogarth.^[12]A Place for Us took Mirza eight years to write,^[10] and explores the shifting dynamics in a Muslim immigrant family living in the States after having immigrated from Hyderabad, India. The novel was reviewed by theNew York Times,^[13] theLos Angeles Review of Books,^[14] andThe Washington Post.^[15] The book was a 2018 bestseller,^[2] and was named among the best books of 2018 byThe Washington Post,^[16] Buzzfeed,^[17] andPeople magazine.^[18] She has been a guest on a number of podcasts celebrating her writing career such as Riff Raff,^[19] Books with Jen,^[20] Shalwar Kameez Dreams^[21] and Bridge India’s Voices.^[22]

Mirza was nominated by authorTommy Orange as an honoree for the National Book Award Foundation's 5 under 35.^[23]

Mirza married British actorRiz Ahmed in 2020 after meeting at a coffee shop inBrooklyn in 2018.^[24][25][26]

• Living people
• 21st-century American women writers
• 1991 births
• American women writers of Indian descent
• 21st-century American novelists
• American novelists of Indian descent
• University of California, Riverside alumni
• Novelists from California
• American women novelists
• Iowa Writers' Workshop alumni

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Biography with signature
• Articles with hCards