Dr. Nadia Hashimi is a Maryland-based pediatrician, best-selling author of four novels, politician, and mother of four. Outside of her medical day job, Hashimi draws on her Afghan culture and heritage to create compelling stories about Afghan women.
Drawing on her activism for women’s rights and affordable healthcare, Hashimi ran for state office in 2017. She released her latest novel, Sparks Like Stars, in March 2021.
Hashimi is a member of the US-Afghan Women’s Council. She is a board member of the Aschiana Foundation and Sahar Education organization for Afghan children and girls. Hashimi also advises the education and leadership organization Kallion.
Nadia Hashimi publishes fiction best-sellers
Hashimi published her first book, The Pearl that Broke its Shell, in May 2014. The novel follows two Afghan women who face similar challenges despite being separated by a century. Hashimi published her second novel, When the Moon is Low, in 2015. A schoolteacher in Kabul must flee with her children after the Taliban rises to power.
“I came into writing in a most unexpected way,” the author told Kimmery Martin. “I was a cheerful pediatrician working in a busy emergency room in Washington, DC. Plus, I was an avid reader who felt compelled by the strength and resilience demonstrated by Afghan women…writing, like medicine, demands attention to the human stories around us.”
A House Without Windows (2016) follows Zeba, a wife and mother who is blamed for the murder of her husband. Zeba befriends the women who have stayed in jail for safety and protection and meets an Afghan-American lawyer. The pediatrician also published two children’s novels: One Half from the East (2016) and The Sky at our Feet (2018).
Nadia Hashimi: the Doctor and Politician
A pediatrician by training, Hashimi earned her MD in Brooklyn, New York. She completed a residency at NYU and Bellevue hospitals before relocating to Maryland. Beginning in 2008, Hashimi worked for five years in the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC. She was in the emergency department.
In 2011 Hashimi started managing her husband’s neurosurgery practice. She became Vice President and Practice Manager at the Center for Brain & Spine in Maryland.
In September 2017, Hashimi launched a congressional campaign with Maryland’s 6th District. Hashimi advertised her expertise as a physician to address healthcare concerns in the state.
“The central problem with our healthcare system is that there’s far too much money going into it and not enough results – or meaningful results – coming out of it,” Hashimi said in an interview with The Methods Man blog. “On either side of the aisle, all of us are in agreement that the soaring costs of healthcare need to be addressed.”
Hashimi’s campaign ended with the Democratic primary in June 2018.
Nadia Hashimi’s Afghan background
Hashimi was born in 1977 in Queens, New York. Her parents emigrated from Afghanistan in the early 1970s, before the Soviet invasion. Hashimi and her brother grew up in upstate New York and New Jersey.
The granddaughter of an Afghan poet, Hashimi’s mother traveled to Europe for her master’s degree in Civil Engineering. Her father studied aviation engineering before leaving to find better work opportunities in the US. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Hashimi’s parents decided to dtay in the U.S. Her father bought a chicken restaurant franchise and owned several restaurants.
The physician earned a B.A. in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from Brandeis University in 2000. She holds an MD from the SUNY Health Science Center at Brooklyn.
Hashimi’s husband, Amin Amini, is a neurosurgeon and Afghan refugee. He left Afghanistan at the end of the Soviet Occupation at 17 years old. They have four children.
Nadia Hashimi publishes Sparks Like Stars
Hashimi published her latest novel, Sparks Like Stars, with William Morrow in March 2021.
She is “always on the lookout for a good story that highlights humanity and the indestructible spirit of women,” the author told Kimmery Martin. “I think the most critical piece to becoming a writer is finding that story that absolutely must be told.”
Sparks Like Stars begins in Kabul in 1978. 10-year-old Sitara lives a comfortable life as the daughter of the Afghanistan’s progressive president’s right-hand man. When the communists stage a coup, Sitara’s entire family is murdered. She grows up to be a surgeon after being smuggled out of the palace and into America. Thirty years later, the man who both saved her and who may have assassinated her family, shows up in her examination room in New York.
““Suspenseful…emotionally compelling. I found myself eagerly following in a way I hadn’t remembered for a long time, impatient for the next twist and turn of the story,” reviewed NPR.
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