Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire. She now lives in Norfolk and works as a freelance writer and tutor. Her first collection, The Country at My Shoulder, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot and the Whitbread poetry Prizes and selected for the New Generation Poets promotion. Europa and At the Time of Partition were both Poetry Book Society Choices and shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and she received a Cholmondeley Award in 2002. Her most recent collection, Fairoz, explores an imagined teenage girl’s susceptibility to extremism. She has completed a PhD at the University of East Anglia on the poetry of Stevie Smith.