Anita Shah Lakyary

Anita is a writer and mom. The Rat Bitten Girl is her first novel, based on a true story.


She has been a Hubert Humphrey Fellow on a Fulbright Scholarship at Phillip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park, USA in 2006-07. In 2011 she was chosen as an exemplary leader from South Asia by US State Department's International Institute of Education USA and she was invited to address and share her experiences with the ongoing group of Humphrey Fellows at Rocky Gap Resort Maryland USA.

She is an award-winning writer and political activist and was affiliated with John Kerry’s Political Action Committee as an intern in Washington DC. She has been a visiting scholar at Strathclyde Center of Gender Studies at Strathclyde University Glasgow UK, on a Charles Wallace Fellowship. She has had her masters in Business Administration and Sociology and Bachelors of Law from University of Sindh Jamshoro and a postgraduate diploma certificate course in Women's Studies from Institute of Women's Studies Lahore.

She has been a political analyst besides having had a long career in journalism in Pakistan, which includes affiliation with the DM Digital TV UK and Voice of America, Washington DC, Pakistan Television and KTN TV
Channel and Daily Kawish. As a broadcaster, writer and social development professional she is a women’s-rights activist who has taken stands on controversial issues.

She belongs to a rural background and was born in a conservative environment where educating girls was virtually banned. But she struggled hard and surmounted all obstacles to her education and right to choose her own destiny. She writes on development, socio-cultural and gender issues. She has worked at the grass roots level for Education Reforms at School level in Hyderabad District in the Sindh Province of Pakistan. She can communicate in Sindhi, Urdu, English, Saraiki and Punjabi.

She is married and lives with her daughter, son and husband in Pakistan.