Shazia Hafiz Ramji is an award-winning writer living and working in Canada and the UK. She grew up in Kenya, England, the UAE, and in Coquitlam, New Westminster, and East Vancouver, British Columbia.

Port of Being is her first book of poems.

Shazia is a PhD Candidate in English at the University of Calgary. She is a SSHRC (CGS-D) Doctoral Fellow and Killam Laureate whose research engages with aurality, intergenerational trauma, the Second World War, and intimacies and afterlives of empire through the lens of the long-eighteenth century. Shazia received an MFA from the University of British Columbia and a BA from Simon Fraser University, where she studied English and history.

She lives in Toronto, Vancouver, and London, UK, where she works as an editor and teaches English and creative writing.

Shazia’s academic work has appeared or is forthcoming in Canadian Literature, 19th Century Studies Journal, University of Toronto Quarterly, and The Literary Review of Canada. She has presented at the Modern Languages Association (MLA), the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE), SpokenWeb, and the Canadian Writers Summit, among others. She has also pitched, moderated and presented on panels thrice at the competitive Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). In 2019, she gave a keynote at the Post/Colonial Ports Conference in association with Writers Read, alongside David Chariandy. Shazia is a founding member and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Collective for ACCUTE, where she served as lead coordinator for the CWC and board member for ACCUTE from 2021-2023.

Her creative work has taken her across Canada and to Portland, Dublin, London, and Singapore, where she was a featured author at the 2019 Singapore Writers Festival, as part of the Canada Council for the Arts’ Canadian writers showcase.

Email shaziahafiz.ramji@ucalgary.ca, shaziahafizramji@gmail.com, or message Shazia on Insta or Twitter.

Contact