Umber Khairi

Umber Khairi is a columnist, writer, and editor. She has worked as a journalist in Pakistan and the UK since the 1980s and was a producer and radio broadcaster at the BBC World Service in London for almost two decades. She is a co-founder of the independent, journalist-owned magazine ‘Newsline’, which was set up under the leadership of the late Razia Bhatti in 1989, and she now runs the Razia Bhatti Memorial Lecture Series in partnership with the IBA’s Centre for Excellence in Journalism (CEJ). Her weekly column, ‘UK Calling’, has featured in The News on Sunday since 1998 and she contributes occasionally to other publications including ‘Dawn’, ‘Naya Daur’ and ‘The Circuit.’ Her unpublished novel, ‘Akbar in Wonderland’, is set in 1990s Pakistan, in a post-martial law landscape. Umber Khairi is a graduate of Princeton University, where she studied Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Studies.