James Beard award-winning writer Ahmed Ali Akbar joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune as a food reporter on Feb. 19. He’ll be working with Food Editor Kayla Samoy.

Ahmed Ali, in spite of his valuable contribution to Urdu fiction, suffered from two ambiguities. Firstly, was he primarily an Urdu writer, who also chose to write in English, or vice versa?

The writer is assistant professor of Urdu and South Asian literature at the University of Virginia. Her edited volume on Ahmed Ali, The Two Sided Canvas: Perspectives on Ahmed Ali, is forthcoming ...

A scholar, short-story writer, novelist, critic and translator, Prof Ahmed Ali is one of those few writers who have written both in Urdu and English.