Agha Shahid Ali

Early life and education Agha Shahid Ali was born on 4 February 1949, in New Delhi in the Union of India, He grew up in Jammu and Kashmir, where his family was from, and in Indiana, where his parents studied. Shahid was educated at the Burn Hall School, later University of Kashmir and Hindu College, University of Delhi.

Literary work Ali expressed his love and concern for his people in In Memory of Begum Akhtar and The Country Without a Post Office, which was written with the Kashmir conflict as a backdrop. and editor for the Middle East and Central Asia segment of Jeffery Paine's Poetry of Our World. He also compiled the volume Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English. His last book was Call Me Ishmael Tonight, a collection of English ghazals, and his poems are featured in American Alphabets: 25 Contemporary Poets (2006) and other anthologies.

Ali taught at the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at University of Massachusetts Amherst, at the MFA Writing Seminars at Bennington College as well as at creative writing programs at SUNY-Binghamton, University of Utah, Baruch College, Warren Wilson College, Hamilton College and New York University.

J&K authorities have removed three poems – "Postcard from Kashmir", "In Arabic" and "The Last Saffron" from the curriculum of University of Kashmir and two poems, "I see Kashmir from New Delhi at Midnight" and "Call me Ishmael Tonight" from the Cluster University. Education advisors in Delhi/Srinagar have maintained that such "Resistance Literature" sustains "secessionist mindset, aspiration & narrative" among students.

Personal life and death Ali was gay and never married. He died of brain cancer in December 2001 and was buried in Northampton, Massachusetts, in the vicinity of Amherst, a town sacred to his beloved poet Emily Dickinson.