Shazea Quraishi is a Pakistan-born Canadian poet, playwritght and translator based in London. A selection of her work was included in the Bloodaxe anthology Ten: new poets from Spread The Word in 2010 and her first pamphlet, The Courtesans Reply, was published by Flipped Eye in 2012. The Art of Scratching, her first book-length collection, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2015.'Shazea Quraishi's first collection, The Art of Scratching, reveals the poet's flair for re-imagining and feminizing historical texts, and for inventing her own edgy fables of family life and childhood.'– Carol Rumens in Poem of the Week, The Guardian