Arifa Akbar is the deputy literary editor and arts writer at The Independent. She has written across the paper including author profiles, book reviews, arts features, TV columns. She was the newspaper’s arts correspondent for four years. She joined The Independent in October 2001 as a news reporter and has written extensively on Britain’s Muslim community and the war on terror. She led the reporting team during the 7/7 London bombings (the coverage for which was short-listed for the Press Gazette ‘team’ award in 2006). Her foreign assignments include the Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan and the Hajj (pilgrimage) in Saudi Arabia. She has featured as a columnist on the (former) BBC Radio Four show, Home Truths, and won the BT Feature Writer of the Year award in 2000. Before joining The Independent, she wrote features for The Sun, India Weekly and numerous regional papers. She has an English Literature degree from Edinburgh University and a Masters in Gender studies.
