Maaz Bin Bilal
Maaz Bin Bilal (b. 1986) is a writer, translator, and academic, based in the national capital region of Delhi, India. A commitment to multiculturalism and diversity forms the unifying thread across his creative, critical, and translation practice across different genres of writing. Having earned his PhD in modern literary studies from Queen’s University Belfast in 2015, he is now working on his monograph, Heterodoxies of Friendship in E. M. Forster: Queer and Beyond.
Maaz has published poetry, academic essays, review articles, book chapters, political commentary, opinion pieces, as well as poetry and prose in translation in many journals, anthologies, newspapers, magazines, and e-zines. His first book of poetry in English with a section of translations from Urdu, Ghazalnama: Poems from Delhi, Belfast, and Urdu, is forthcoming in 2019 from Yoda Press, New Delhi.
He is currently translating two of Fikr Taunsvi’s books Chhata Darya or The Sixth River, and Pyaz ke Chhilkeor Onion Skins,from Urdu, for Speaking Tiger Press that will be published in 2019 and 2020 respectively. At present, he is working on the first Taunsvi book, translating selected Braj poetry by the often-maligned Mughal king, Aurangzeb, and a fresh cycle of poems responding to waves of nationalisms in India and in the UK.
He incorporates many of these concerns into his teaching as Assistant Professor in literary studies at Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities at O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India. He hopes to also begin writing in Urdu and Hindi in the near future.