Sumayya Usmani

Sumayya was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1973. She travelled the world on merchant ships with her parents until the age of nine. Sumayya's family finally settled down in Karachi, where she then grew up. Sumayya read for an LLM from University College London in 2001 and practised law at her father’s law firm in Karachi. In 2006 she moved to London and worked as a solicitor in a City law firm until 2012 when she quit law to pursue food writing full-time.

Sumayya is passionate about her heritage cuisine and has written two cookbooks on Pakistani cuisine. Her first book, Summers Under the Tamarind Tree: Recipes and Memories from Pakistan (Frances Lincoln, 2016) was the first Pakistani cookbook in Britain and won the Best First Cookbook category in the Gourmand Cookbook Awards in 2016. It was also shortlisted for The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award for Best Food and Travel Book 2016. Her second cookbook Mountain Berries and Desert Spice: Sweet Inspirations from the Hunza Valley to the Arabian Sea (Frances Lincoln, 2017) was shortlisted for the Best Cookbook of the Year category in the Food & Travel Magazine Awards.

Her latest book is a coming-of-age food memoir called Andaza: A Memoir of Food, Flavour and Finding Freedom in the Pakistani Kitchen (2023, Murdoch Books) which won the Scottish Book Trust Award 'Next Chapter' in 2021, for a book in progress.

Sumayya is now settled in Glasgow, Scotland. She mentors writers online as well as runs an online monthly writer's membership. Sumayya is also currently reading for her MLitt in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow and is working on her next narrative book.

Find more on Sumayya:

www.sumayyausmani.com

@SumayyaUsmani