Leesa Gazi Author & Translator

Leesa Gazi is a British-Bangladeshi writer, actor, and filmmaker and is the joint artistic director of London-based arts company Komola Collective. She was the scriptwriter and performer on Six Seasons and A Golden Age at the Southbank Centre, London. Aleya Twist, Gazi’s Bengali adaptation of Oliver Twist, reimagines Oliver as a young girl. Gazi also wrote, directed, and produced several short films for a UK-based counter-extremism think tank in 2017 and 2019. Gazi was a concept developer, cowriter, and performer for Birangona: Women of War, which she later developed into the documentary Rising Silence. The film, about the lives of rape survivors after the Bangladesh Liberation War, won numerous awards, including the Best Documentary Award at the 2019 Dhaka International Film Festival. Gazi translated Ben Musgrave’s The Indigo Giant—set during the Indigo Rebellion in Bengal—into Bengali (Neel Chhaya) for an international theatrical tour in 2021. Her debut novel, Rourob, was published in 2010.