Leesa Gazi

Leesa Gazi is a Bangladeshi British author, theater practitioner, award-winning filmmaker, and joint artistic director of the London-based arts organization Komola Collective. She has dedicated her career to presenting stories from women's perspecives. Multiple plays written and translated by Gazi toured nationally and internationally. She was the cowriter and performer of the play Birangona: Women of War, nominated for the Offies (UK), which she later developed into the documentary feature Rising Silence, which sheds light on the lives of sexual violence survivors in the aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War.

Westland Books published Good Girls (previously titled Hellfire), an English translation of Gazi's critically acclaimed Bengali novel Rourob, translated by Shabnam Nadiya in 2020. She has written, performed, and created content for many prestigious venues and organizations, including Shakespeare's Globe, the BBC, TED Talks, Sadler's Wells, the Southbank Centre, and Akram Khan Company. Gazi has also written and directed several counterviolent extremism short films for a UK-based think tank.

Currently, Gazi is completing her debut fiction film, Barir Naam Shahana (A House Named Shahana), which won FBR Winner 2021--Feature at the NFDC Film Bazaar.