About the Author

Irna Qureshi is an ethnographer, writer and oral historian specialising in British Asian arts, culture and identity. She is also co-founder of Bradford Literature Festival. Irna has collaborated on several exhibitions and books on these themes, including Coming of Age: 21 Years of Mela in the UK, The Grand Trunk Road: From Delhi to the Khyber Pass and Home from Home: British Pakistanis in Mirpur. Her personal essays have appeared in Critical Muslim, South Asian Popular Culture and New Statesman. She also writes regularly for Culture Vulture and The Guardian’s Northerner Blog. In 2012 Irna wrote Cartographies of Love, a live performance featuring herself and based on intimate conversations with three generations of Muslim women about their attitudes towards love and marriage.

Irna discovered Indian films during her teenage years in Bradford. She has a private collection of vintage and contemporary Bollywood film posters. She curated Bollywood Icons: 100 Years of Indian Cinema for the National Media Museum (2013) and another exhibition, Bollywood in Love for the British Film Institute (2002).

Bollywood in Britain reflects Irna’s journey of being British, Pakistani, Muslim and female in Bradford. Her autobiographical stories are set against the backdrop of the classic Indian films she grew up with. The later episodes, starting with The Wedding Day, chart the progress of Irna’s traditional marriage in Pakistan during the 1990s. Do subscribe by leaving your email address in the box (top right of blog) if you’d like to be notified every time a new instalment is posted.

You can contact Irna on Twitter.