Shamim Azad started her professional career as a journalist and teacher back in Bangladesh, her home country. She was interested in arts and literature and the celebration of creative initiatives right from her girlhood. Since 1970, she has been seriously writing short stories and poems. In 1990, she moved to the UK to teach at the primary level. She is now one of best-known Bengali poets in the UK. She has a deep passion and an interest in arts and literature, a commitment for enhancing cultural enrichment and an passion championing awareness for diversity. She believes that the celebration of literature is the best way to create harmony in this divisive, intolerant, conflicting world
Her poems and translations have appeared in magazines in Bangladesh, India, the UK and the USA, including The New Yorker. Azad received the ‘Bangla Academy Literary Award’ in poetry, the country’s highest literary award, the UK’s ‘National Lottery Award’. She was a Poet-in-Residence at ‘A Poet’s Agora’ in Athens, Greece. She has so far published nearly 40 books from various genres, including 13 collections of poetry.
Azad is a Trustee at Rich Mix, an Executive Council member of the Exiled Writers Ink, the Founder-Chair of theBSK, Bishow Shahitya Kendra (the World Literature Centre) London, the Chair of BBPC, British Bilingual Poetry Collective CIC. She is the pioneer and initiator of r, a non-profit organization, Bijoyphool, Victory Flower, an intergenerational storytelling initiative for the liberation movement of Bangladesh independence. ShamimAzad, now retired, is a fulltime writer, living in London.
