Tasneem Jamal was born in Mbarara, Uganda, and immigrated to Canada with her family in 1975. The author of the novel Where the Air Is Sweet, she serves as a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly and is at work on her second novel. When not writing, Tasneem serves as Communications Officer at Project Ploughshares, a Waterloo-based peace research institute. She lives in Kitchener.