Feryal Ali Gauhar

Feryal Ali-Gauhar is a teacher, filmmaker, actor, writer and activist. Her first novel, The Scent of Wet Earth in August, was a bestseller in India; her second novel, No Space for Further Burials, won the Patras Bokhari award and was translated into several European languages. Her third novel, An Abundance of Wild Roses, was written with the assistance of the Roger Deakin award for environmental activism. Ali-Gauhar has served as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Population Fund, and has worked extensively with women and children subjected to violence and sexual crimes. She spent forty years in the development sector, focusing on poverty, marginalisation and political inclusion. For the past fifteen years, she has worked on the two largest dams in South Asia in the area of cultural heritage management. Ali-Gauhar has been imprisoned twice by two military regimes in Pakistan. She lives in Lahore with twenty-four rescued animals, including several donkeys, a turtle and four dogs.