Zainab Priya (zp) Dala is a freelance novelist, poet and playwright. Her debut novel, What about Meera (Umuzi, 2015), won the Inaugural Minara Aziz Hassim Award and was longlisted for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The architecture of loss (Pegasus New York, 2017; Speaking Tiger India, 2018), has been released worldwide and is a fiction based on fact novel about the patriarchy and forgotten women of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, The Witness, The Post and The Sunday Tribune. She received an Honorary Fellowship in Writing from the University of Iowa in 2016.