17-year-old Amin Ahmad might’ve been surprised by the trajectory of his life, three decades later.
“It’s very strange where my life has taken me,” Ahmad says. “I didn’t expect to be in North Carolina—and I certainly didn’t expect to be teaching writing!”
Last fall, Ahmad joined Duke’s faculty as a professor of English. While he’s new to Duke, Ahmad is no stranger to crafting an engaging story. In addition to his critically acclaimed novels, Ahmad’s work has appeared in a litany of prestigious magazines, from the Harvard Review to The Sun Magazine.
You might think that an author like Ahmad found his stride during undergrad, or in an MFA program focused on creative writing. His background, though, is anything but traditional.
At the age of 17, Ahmad immigrated to the United States from India. He initially followed in the footsteps of his banker father, graduating with a degree in economics and political economy. After a summer stint at a Dubai bank, however, he realized that finance wasn’t for him.
So he made a switch. He picked up a degree in architecture from MIT and spent over a decade in the field. But even that felt inauthentic—"I was a working architect for 15 years, but it always felt like I was impersonating an architect,” he tells me.
What remained constant—across continents, and changing careers—was Ahmad’s interest in writing. “I never stopped writing. I took adult writing classes at night. All those years as an architect, I’d be on construction sites, and early in the morning, or during my lunch break, I’d run off and write a little bit in my car.”
Eventually, Ahmad quit architecture altogether, and he joined a suspense writing course in New York. The product of this class would develop into The Caretaker, Amin’s first published novel, followed by The Last Taxi Ride.
Ahmad now writes full-time. But though he’s long left architecture behind, its influence is readily apparent in his writing process.
“The way I write differs from other people’s methods—it’s a hang up from my architectural background. I know from designing houses that you don’t sit down and design a house in one shot. You make a lot of exploratory sketches, and it’s only after you’ve really explored the design problem that you craft a design solution.”
The spirit of architecture carries over into his teaching, too. Ahmad isn’t shy to admit the value of talent, or the fact that some people are simply born with unique perspectives. But he pushes back against the mysticism so often associated with good writing.
Instead, Ahmad emphasizes the importance of learning the craft elements that form the backbone of fiction. “It’s like a carpenter learning how to make tables. At first, you make a lot of crappy tables, and a lot of shaky ones!” Ahmad chuckles. “But eventually you build up to something more ornate.”
What’s particularly interesting about Ahmad is his genre-hopping agility. Though he’s made a name for himself in suspense novels, he’s also a skilled memoirist. In Ahmad’s eyes, the genres overlap more than you’d imagine.
“There’s this real distinction in the literary world between character-driven and plot-driven stories, and I find that be completely arbitrary,” Ahmad says. “I am always using my mystery writer skills—creating patterns, creating little mysteries that lead to bigger things.”
Ahmad’s success proves that his techniques resonate with readers—and critics. Recently, BkMk Press awarded Ahmad the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, for his short story collection entitled This is Not Your Country.
The collection is a conglomerate of published and unpublished works stretching back 10 years. While they vary in perspective and style, these stories all follow Indian immigrants trying to find their way in the new world.
The title is a play on the name of a children’s picture book by Jon Klassen. “My 5-year-old daughter had this book called This is Not My Hat. And I thought wow, that’s a title, but it’s also a very powerful statement.”
“So I thought, why not call it This is Not Your Country, because that’s the story of the collection: people trying to find their way in a place that doesn’t really recognize or acknowledge them.”
As I spoke with Ahmad, I noticed this repeated fascination with both the immigrant narrative and his native country. And Ahmad confirmed it. “In terms of POV and structure of the story, I’ve learned a lot in the last 10 years, so I can be a lot more innovative,” he qualifies. “But I’ve found that my obsessions are the same. India is always in my mind. Many days, physically I’m in Durham, but mentally I’m in India.”
Originally, Ahmad planned for an April publication of This is Not Your Country, but COVID has delayed the timeline a bit. But while he waits, Ahmad isn’t sitting still. He is currently working on two major projects: a memoir about a house that’s been in his family for generations; and a novel following an Indian woman seeking to steal back the baby she carried as a surrogate.
He’s also settling into the North Carolina rhythm. “I like Durham because it reminds me of home, of India—the big old houses, the porches.”
At Duke, Ahmad teaches a variety of creative writing courses, including Introduction to Creative Writing, Introduction to the Writing of Fiction, and Intermediate Fiction Writing. Students can find him in Durham this Fall teaching a version of English 221S: Introduction to Fiction Writing called “Writing the Unspeakable.”
English Department
