Riz Ahmed’s Wife, Fatima Farheen Mirza, Is Ridiculously Impressive

Mirza is a published author whose first novel, “A Place For Us,” became a major bestseller in 2018. The book, which follows an Indian-Muslim family living in California, was the first book published by Sarah Jessica Parker‘s imprint, SJP For Hogarth.

In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Mirza revealed that her first career plan wasn’t writing: she was premed at first. Eventually, she switched her focus to creative writing and then earned a spot at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

“When I first moved to pursue my undergraduate degree, I was in agreement with my dad that I would become a doctor. But I was miserable in my pre-med courses, so I switched to creative writing,” she said. “Saying that I needed to write this novel was jarring for us at first, but, in the end, no one has been more supportive than my family.”

Like many writers, Mirza drew on some of her own experiences to write “A Place For Us,” but she insists that it’s not autobiographical. “It’s both a novel that is deeply personal to me, and one that doesn’t look anything like my life when you to consider the facts. The novel isn’t autobiographical because the characters took on their own lives, they acted in ways that I never acted, but through them, the heart of it is very personal,” she told Read It Forward.

For instance, as she told The Guardian, she drew somewhat on her own experiences wearing (and not wearing) hijab. “I wore hijab from when I was nine until I was about 22,” she said. “It wasn’t out of a lack of respect or care that I took it off. It was the opposite of that. It was because I have so much respect for hijab and for the women in my life who are devoted to it, that I realised my own personal relationship with it was not for the same reasons. It has made me who I am and it will always be a part of me, even if it is not visible to the outside world.”

“As a kid my brothers played soccer, and every year we’d go buy them cleats for the new season, and I would see these pink boxing gloves and I would want them and I never got them,” Mirza told The Guardian. “And so now, not only is boxing a really fun way to exercise, it also feels like I’m allowing a younger version of myself to have what she wanted then.”