Mirza Waheed was born and brought up in Srinagar, Kashmir. At 18 he moved to Delhi to study English Literature at the University of Delhi, and thereafter worked as a journalist and editor in the city for four years. In 2001, he moved to London to join the BBC’s Urdu Service in London, where he now works as an editor. Waheed briefly attended the Arvon Foundation in 2007. He has written for the Kashmir Observer and the BBC’s Urdu and English websites and appeared on BBC radio and TV as a commentator.

His first novel, The Collaborator, is set in Waheed’s hometown of Kashmir during the early 1990s, and depicts the harrowing conflict between India and Pakistan and its effects on a border village in Kashmir.