Agha Shahid Ali

Agha Shahid Ali was a Kashmiri-American poet who wrote in English and carried the ghazal into American poetry. Born in New Delhi in 1949 and raised in Kashmir, he studied at the University of Kashmir and the University of Delhi, then earned a PhD at Pennsylvania State University and an MFA at the University of Arizona, teaching at universities including Hamilton, Princeton and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His collections include The Half-Inch Himalayas, A Nostalgist's Map of America, The Country Without a Post Office and Rooms Are Never Finished, a National Book Award finalist, and he translated Faiz Ahmed Faiz and edited Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. His poems return again and again to Kashmir, exile, memory, loss and home. He died in Amherst, Massachusetts, on 8 December 2001.