Jabeen Akhtar was born in London and immigrated with her Pakistani parents and three older siblings to the United States when she was two years old. She is a speaker with the State Department's Citizen Dialogue program, which sends Muslim and Pakistani-Americans abroad to speak to journalists, entertainers, students, Muslim leaders and government officials about life in the United States. A former fed, Jabeen spent seven years writing and publishing federal regulations for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before quitting to try out fiction writing and being broke. Her interests include cat rescue, trail running, and anything South Park-related.

Jabeen lives in Washington, D.C. where she is working on her second novel.

Click here for a Q&A with Jabeen.

Click here for Jabeen's advice on publishing.