Sana Safi

Early years

Sana Safi was born in Kabul and raised in Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar and across other cities in Afghanistan. Safi left Afghanistan in 2007 and is currently living in the United Kingdom. She is fluent in Pashto, Dari and English.

Journalism

Safi lives in London where she works for the BBC. She started her career as a presenter/producer for a children's programme in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad before joining the BBC Afghan's Afghan Woman Hour programme and main current affairs transmissions later.

She is currently a presenter for BBC Pashto's TV show which is a 30 minutes show, made of local, regional and international news. Safi was the first journalist to speak to Afghanistan's Lebanese-American First Lady Rula Ghani in her first broadcast interview after her husband Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai took office.

Writing

Alongside Safi's journalistic work, she is known for her fictional writings. She writes mainly short stories which has been widely published in her native country Afghanistan. Her short stories tell the tale of a young independent Muslim woman who knows all about the secrets of her country of origin and traditions and is also very much integrated into a western society.

She tells the contrasting features of East and West and the similarities of human kind. Considering her background and upbringing Safi doesn't shy away from discussing some fundamental social issues in her stories. She has written about a wide range of topics, sexual, and physical violence against women, to the more controversial topics such as dating, socializing and daily life of a young westerner.