N. H. Senzai

Naheed Hasnat Senzai grew up speaking two languages while navigating two cultures—and enjoying the best of both cuisines, from tandoori chicken to hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Born in Chicago, Illinois, she boarded her first airplane at just two months old and has been traveling ever since.

She spent her childhood in San Francisco and Jubail, Saudi Arabia, before attending boarding school in London, where classmates voted her “Most Likely to Lead a Literary Revolution” for her talent at reading comic books in class without getting caught.

Senzai's travels have taken her across the Alps, through Mexico by road, into the Red Sea to swim with barracudas, across the former Soviet Union by train, down the Nile, to the Taj Mahal, and to New Orleans for gumbo.

She now lives in San Francisco with her husband, a political science professor, their son, and a cat that, as she likes to say, owns the family.