Mariam Pirbhai is a creative writer and academic. She is the author of an award-winning short story collection titled Outside People and Other Stories, a novel titled Isolated Incident, and several academic works on diasporic, postcolonial and world literature, including Mythologies of Migration, Vocabularies of Indenture: Novels of the South Asian Diaspora in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific. Mariam was born in Pakistan and lived in England, the United Arab Emirates and the Philippines before her family immigrated to Canada in the late 1980s. She completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of Montreal, for which she received the Governor General’s Gold Medal. Mariam lives and works in Waterloo, where she enjoys photographing and painting the natural landscapes of southwestern Ontario.
“Absorbing, earnest and beautifully written, Isolated Incident is a loving portrayal of Canadians besieged by hate-crimes. Through fluid and insightful storytelling Mariam Pirbhai shows how each must rise above grief, rage, and despair to face the price and dangers of belonging.”
Shauna Singh Baldwin
The Tiger Claw, What the Body Remembers and English Lessons
“As Diane Arbus is to photography, so is Mariam Pirbhai to literature – bringing forth the margins, but nobly, with understanding and an unusual generosity…”
Shani Mootoo
Cereus Blooms at Night, Polar Vortex
Two views of the Grand River near Waterloo, Ontario
(Photo: M. Pirbhai)