About: Fiza Pathan
Fiza Pathan was born on the 19th of March, 1989 at Mandar Nursing Home, and grew up in her maternal home, in Bandra (West), Mumbai.
Her father, Iqbal, as she mentions in her book The Reclusive Writer & Reader of Bandra: Essays, abandoned her because she was a girl. She was brought up by her mother, Philomena Pathan (nee Martis), who was a teacher at Bombay Scottish School, where Fiza herself went to school. Fiza does not have any siblings.
The young Fiza grew up surrounded by books, thanks to her school library, a loving librarian, Mrs. Ratnaswami, and a generous uncle, Blaise. Fiza believes that she is an amalgamation of the books she has read over nearly twenty-seven years and the places that have provided her with excellent reading material.
Fiza wanted to be a writer from an early age. She, however, wrote her first book of short stories S.O.S. Animals and Other Stories, a book described by reviewers as “timeless fables suitable for readers of all ages,” and “short stories that could be used as daily meditations by adults,” when she was in her first year at college.
Fiza studied at Saint Andrew’s College of Arts, Commerce & Science, which is affiliated to the Mumbai University, where she read widely outside her syllabus. Her knowledge of Classics, which was gained through reading in school and college, would one day come in handy for writing her award-winning non-fiction book, CLASSICS: Why and how we can encourage children to read them.
Her course included a year or two in Psychology, in which she excelled. But she elected to graduate in her favorite subjects, History & Sociology, which she did with a first class.
After her graduation, she moved to the Saint Theresa’s Institute of Education and graduated with a first class in Education, and her selected subjects: English and History. Fiza, now a trained teacher, began teaching at a prestigious ICSE school in Mumbai. It was there that a teacher, reading her palm, informed her that her left hand had a deeply etched mark of a pen, and she had always been a writer in earlier lifetimes.
Fiza conceived ideas for her first book, and for subsequent books, while playing with her toys and imaginary playmates and villains, narrating horror stories to children in the building, praying at church, or listening to oftentimes boring sermons at church or equally boring lectures at school. She wrote mostly in longhand and completed her first manuscript while in Saint Andrew’s College. But she published her first book of short stories only in August 2012 on the self-publishing platform, CreateSpace, an Amazon Company. From then onwards she never looked back, publishing her next book, Treasury of Bizarre Christmas Stories, in November 2012.
Classics: Why we should encourage children to read them followed in 2013 and was an instant success, remaining on the bestseller list of top 100 in education and reference from September 2013 onwards till 2015, both on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. This was followed by her book CLASSICS: How we can encourage children to read them which fetched many awards and was described by the Eric Hoffer Committee as “destined to become a classic reference for the classics themselves.”
She wrote her first novella NIRMALA: The Mud Blossom in 2014 immediately after compiling her first book of poignant, heart-breaking poetry, So This Is Love: Collected Poems which was published in March 2014, followed by a short story “Flesh of Flesh: Short Story” in May 2014. This was followed by The Flame Will Always Burn: Selected Poems in June 2015, Amina: The Silent One, another novella, in August 2015 and Raman and Sunny: Middle School Blues, a Young Adult full-length novel in December 2015.
Fiza established her publishing company Fiza Pathan Publishing (OPC) Private Limited in May 2016. She had already begun work on her book of short stories focusing on problems faced by the LGBTQ community immediately after completing Raman and Sunny: Middle School Blues. But the company’s first offering in March 2017 was a combined edition of her award-winning books: Classics: Why we should encourage children to read them and CLASSICS: How we can encourage children to read. The title of the book is CLASSICS: Why and how we can encourage children to read them, and includes a special bonus feature “My Take on the Classics: A Memoir” by Fiza Pathan. It has been published under the company’s Imprint – Freedom with Pluralism®. This book has won multiple awards for both Fiza and her company.
Her book The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Short Stories, a book which focuses exclusively on the problems faced worldwide by the LGBTQ community, was published in November 2017, and has won her and the company many prestigious awards in not only the LGBTQ category but also in Short Stories.
Fiza Pathan Publishing (OPC) Private Limited has also published, Fiza Pathan’s back titles after fresh editorial work was undertaken on them. You can now find her award-winning novellas NIRMALA: The Mud Blossom and Amina: The Silent One in our catalog, perennial favorites with lasting appeal focusing on social issues. She has recently published The Reclusive Writer & Reader of Bandra: Essays and Scenes of a Reclusive Writer & Reader of Mumbai: Essays in which she allows the reader a glimpse into an otherwise very reclusive life.
After finishing her manuscript, The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name: Short Stories, Fiza decided to focus on abridging the ‘rare classics’ for children, excellent classics in themselves, but which have still not been abridged and illustrated for the younger generation of children. These books focus on the age group 7-12 so that the vast repertoire of classic literature is also available to them. Fiza has joined hands with a fellow writer, Michaelangelo Zane, and has so far published four titles. These are: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by the acclaimed writer Washington Irving, Through the Looking-Glass: And What Alice Found There by the equally famous Lewis Carroll, CARMILLA by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu who wrote his vampire story in the late 18th century and influenced the writings of Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula, and Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster, the coming-of-age story of an orphan and her mysterious benefactor. Five more classic titles have been abridged and will be published in the coming year.
Honours & Awards
Fiza Pathan has received many honours and awards, including:
IAN Book of the Year Award, 2019
Global E-Book Award, 2019
Purple Dragonfly Book Awards, 2019 (four awards)
The Wishing Shelf Book Awards, 2019
Digital Book World (DBW) Award, 2018
Killer Nashville, Silver Falchion Award, 2018
IAN Book of the Year Award, 2018
Global E-Book Award, 2018
Montaigne Medal (Eric Hoffer Award), 2018
Purple Dragonfly Award, 2018
Independent Press Award, 2018
Reader Views Literary Awards, 2017-2018
Literary Classics Book Awards, 2017
Readers’ Favorite International Book Award, 2017
Mom’s Choice Awards, 2017
CIPA EVVY Award, 2017
The Wishing Shelf Book Awards, 2017
New Apple E-Book Awards, 2017
Global E-Book Award, 2017
Instructional and Insightful Non-fiction Book Awards (Chanticleer International Book Awards and Writing Competition, 2017
And many more . . .
She maintains a personal website at https://fizapathan.com/
Blogs at https://insaneowl.com
and tweets under the Twitter handle @FizaPathan.
Her company’s websites are: https://fizapathanpublishing.us/ and
https://fizapathanpublishing.org/
She is a member of:
Authors Guild, USA
PEN America
Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI)