Background

Fatima Shaik was born on October 24, 1952, in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. She is a daughter Lily LaSalle Shaik. Fatima Shaik's father was one of the first black aviators in the state.

Education

Fatima Shaik attended Xavier University for two years. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Boston University in 1974. Shaik also studied at New York University where she received a Master of Arts degree in 1978.

Career

Fatima Shaik started her career as a summer intern reporter in several New Orlean's newspapers. In 1974 she took up a post of city desk reporter in The Times-Picayune newspaper. She held this post until 1975 and in 1976 she started to work as an assistant editor in World News Division at McGraw-Hill Book Company. In 1981, she was appointed as a foreign digests editor and in 1987 she became a copy editor in Standard & Poor’s Division. In 1988, Shaik left McGraw-Hill Book Company and in 1990 she became an instructor in print journalism at Southern University at New Orleans. Since 1991 she works as an assistant professor in the communication and media culture department at Saint Peter's University.

Fatima Shaik published her first book The Mayor of New Orleans: Just Talking Jazz in 1987. Later she published such books as Melitte, The Jazz of Our Street and On Mardi Gras Day by Fatima Shaik. Her recent book What Went Missing and What Got Found was published in 2015. Shaik is also a contributor of articles and stories to periodicals, including Working Woman, Black Enterprise, Essence, Southern Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Callaloo, Tribes: Multicultural, and Xavier Review.

Achievements

• Fatima Shaik is an American journalist, educator, and writer who is famous for her books for adults and children. Her famous books are Melitte, The Jazz of Our Street and What Went Missing and What Got Found.
  
  Fatima Shaik received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study Aesthetics and Popular Culture at the University of Chicago in 1981. She also received a grant from Kittredge Fund in 1997.
  
  Fatima Shaik is included in A Booklover’s Guide to New Orleans and the Encyclopedia of African American Writers.

Works

More photos

• book

  • What Went Missing and What Got Found

    (A love letter to the entertaining, unpredictable, and fla...)

    2015
  • Melitte

    (Melitte lives a difficult life as the slave of a fierce o...)

    1997
  • The Jazz of Our Street

    (Two siblings dash from their porch one morning to join th...)

    1998
  • The Mayor of New Orleans: Just Talking Jazz 1987
  • On Mardi Gras Day 1999

Views

Quotations: “I believe in the development of the whole person and in teaching students the way to learn so that they can apply the techniques from my classes in everyday situations. I believe that knowledge increasingly requires a high level of idea synthesis and I try to model that approach to information and use that standard for assessment.”

Membership

Fatima Shaik is a member of the Board of Trustees for PEN American Center.

Connections

Fatima Shaik married James Little in 1984. The marriage produced two children.

Mother:

Lily LaSalle Shaik

husband:

James Little