Taran Khan

Taran N. Khan is an award-winning journalist and nonfiction writer. Her first book, Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul, was published by Penguin Random House in the UK (Chatto & Windus) and India in 2019. The book is an intimate look at a city known mostly through war, which drew from Taran’s time living and working in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2013. It won the Tata Literature Live! First Book award, as well as the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award, and has been translated into Chinese and Arabic. 

Taran’s work as a journalist and essayist has appeared in Al Jazeera, Granta, the Guardian, LitHub, McSweeney’s, Himal Southasian and Guernica, among others. She writes on a range of topics including culture, cinema, gender, conflict and migration. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell international artists residency; the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature, the Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia; and the Logan Nonfiction Program, among others. Currently, she is researching the lives of nineteenth-century women travellers from India. 

Taran also teaches nonfiction writing to diverse communities and groups including refugees and asylum seekers, schoolchildren and teachers. She is part of South Asia Speaks, a year-long literary mentorship programme for emerging writers, and has contributed to initiatives like Write to Life, Fences & Frontiers, and Arvon. She has been invited to speak at events including the Jaipur Literature Festival, Kendal Mountain Festival and 5×15 Stories. Taran holds degrees in communication and development studies, and has studied in Delhi and London.