Fatima Farheen Mirza

Mirza was born and raised in California.[3] Her parents are both of Indian descent; her mother grew up to a British Indian family in Birmingham, while her father immigrated to the United States from Hyderabad.[4] She grew up in an observant Muslim family.[5] Mirza attended the University of California, Riverside, where she pursued medical studies at first but made a career shift to creative writing as an undergraduate.[3] She later graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop[3][6][7] and received the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship.[8] She has taught at the University of Iowa and New York University.[9]

Mirza submitted the book manuscript for her debut novel A Place for Us for publication in 2017.[10] The 400-page novel[11] was the first book to be published by actor Sarah Jessica Parker's new imprint in collaboration with Crown Publishing Group, called SJP for Hogarth.[12] A Place for Us took Mirza eight years to write,[10] and explores the shifting dynamics in a Muslim immigrant family living in the States after having immigrated from Hyderabad, India. The novel was reviewed by the New York Times,[13] the Los Angeles Review of Books,[14] and The Washington Post.[15] The book was a 2018 bestseller,[2] and was named among the best books of 2018 by The Washington Post,[16] Buzzfeed,[17] and People magazine.[18] She has been a guest on a number of podcasts celebrating her writing career such as Riff Raff,[19] Books with Jen,[20] Shalwar Kameez Dreams[21] and Bridge India’s Voices.[22]

Mirza was nominated by author Tommy Orange as an honoree for the National Book Award Foundation's 5 under 35.[23]

Mirza married British actor Riz Ahmed in 2020.[24] The couple met in Brooklyn at a coffee shop in 2018.[25][26]