Waqas Khwaja

Khwaja is the Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor of English at Agnes Scott College where he teaches courses in Postcolonial literature, 18th & 19th century British literature (British Romanticism, Victorian Poetry and Prose, Gothic Literature, Novels of Empire, among others), Literature and Leadership, and Creative Writing. He obtained his Ph.D. from Emory University and wrote his dissertations on the later novels of W. M. Thackeray, Pendennis, The Newcomes, and The Adventures of Philip. He has published four collections of poetry, (Hold Your Breath, No One Waits for the Train, Mariam’s Lament and other poems, and Six Geese from a Tomb at Medum), and a literary travelogue (Writers and Landscapes) about his experiences as a fellow of the International Writers Program, University of Iowa, in addition to three edited anthologies of Pakistani literature (Cactus, Mornings in the Wilderness, and Short Stories from Pakistan). He served as translation editor (and contributor) for Modern Poetry of Pakistan (Dalkey, 2011), a project jointly sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts and the Pakistan Academy of Letters, showcasing the work of 44 poets from Pakistan’s national and regional languages, and guest-edited a special issue of scholarly articles on Pakistani Literature for the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies (2011). He has also guest edited a special issue on Pakistani poetry for Atlanta Review (2014). His poems and translations have appeared in US, South Asian, European, African, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern publications, literary journals, and anthologies. A bilingual edition of his collection No One Waits for the Train (titled No One Waits for the Train / Nadie espera el tren), in the original English text and its translation in Spanish, was published by Editorial Juglar in Madrid in June 2024, the translations done by the Mexican poet and musicologist Elisa Corona Aguilar.

A regular contributor to The Frontier Post, The Pakistan Economic Review, The Pakistan Times, News International, The Nation, and The Friday Times between 1983 and 1992, Khwaja was a practicing lawyer and visiting professor of law in Pakistan before migrating to the U.S. in 1994. He has published articles and essays on writers from many linguistic and cultural traditions and on subjects as wide-ranging as literature and economics, history, culture, and politics.

The recipient of an endowed chair at Agnes Scott College (2017) and special recognition for outstanding creative writing from the South Asian Literary Society (SALA), USA, (2017), among other honors, Khwaja regularly organizes poetry readings at Agnes Scott College, including an annual public celebration of poetry as part of the international “100 Thousand Poets for Change” project.

Khwaja's website may be accessed at wkhwaja.agnesscott.org