Agha Shahid Ali

Agha Shahid Ali Biography

Agha Shahid Ali born in delhi brought up in Srinagar was a poet, he had been under the treatment of cancer for almost fourteen months before he died. His close friend and renowned author Amitav Ghosh visited him on 25 April, 2001, 8 months before his death. Agha Shahid Ali died on December 8, 2001, Amherst, Massachusetts, United States.

Later the famous writer and friend of Sahid Amitav Ghosh wrote a piece titled as The Ghat of the Only World to keep his promise of writing something after he expired. The University of Utah Press awards the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize annually "in memory of a celebrated poet and beloved teacher".

Agha Shahid Ali was one of the finest writers of Ghazals, a specific form of Persian style of writing form that utilizes repetition, rhyme and couplets. He as an editor of Ravishing Disunities: Real Ghazals in English language described the long history of fascination of Western writers with Ghazals, also as offering a theoretical reading of the form itself.

His collections include 
"A Walk Through the Yellow Pages"The Half-Inch Himalayas""A Nostalgist's Map of America""The Country Without a Post Office""Rooms Are Never Finished" this book nominated him as finalist for the National Book Award in 2001.


Lecturer in English, University of Delhi, 1970-75, Instructor, Pennsylvania State University, 1976-83Graduate assistant, University of Arizona, Tucson, 1983-85; Communications editor, JNC Companies, Tucson,  1985-87; Hamilton College, Assistant professor of English and creative writing, Clinton, NY, 1987-93; Associate professor of English, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Also Visiting professor of creative writing State University of New York etc.

Published: N/A

Updated: April 16, 2015