A conversation with Ausma Zehanat Khan

Ausma Zehanat Khan is a multi-award-winning author of crime and fantasy fiction that features Muslim protagonists and Islamic cultural milieus. Her work also engages with a wide range of contemporary global issues including genocide, terrorism, police violence, and refugee crossings. To date she has published 12 novels, which include two mystery series and the fantasy series The Khorasan Archives. Her first novel, The Unquiet Dead, which opens her Khattak/Getty crime series, was the winner of the Barry Award, the Arthur Ellis Award, and the Romantic Times Award for Best First Novel. Her latest crime series is set in Colorado and introduces us to a new detective who is female and Muslim. In this interview, Khan discusses the influence of her Pashtun roots and her work as an international human rights lawyer on her writing, the importance of diverse characters in genre fiction, the challenges of “translation” in the process of publishing and marketing books, and the global nature of her chosen genres.