A. Daniyal was born in 1989 in Lahore, Pakistan.
He grew up in a small town near Bergamo, Italy, and finished high school there. During this time, despite the angst, he fell in love with Italian language and literature.
He moved to Toronto, Canada in 2008. He got a Hospitality and Tourism diploma from Humber College. In the next few years he held various jobs: graveyard shift gas station attendant, travel agent, language tutor, intern copywriter, handyman, some stints in warehouses, and he spent a year long-haul truck driving in Canada and United States before putting his head straight and coming back to Toronto to start uni.
He has a BA in Political Science, International Relations, and Philosophy. During his undergrad he first took courses in Latin American politics, and then later on moved to study Eastern European and Russian culture, literature, and politics. One summer, he interned for a student NGO in Bagua Grande, in northern Peru, where he helped organise playful ateliers about water hygiene and health for rural school kids. This gave him an opportunity to travel through South America from Colombia to Uruguay, and discover new cultures and literatures and authors. He also interned in Timisoara, Romania. During the winter breaks he kept on going back to Europe and exploring it bit by bit, travelling out of his favourite city Paris towards the far reaches of the continent mostly by bus.
During the undergrad years he also kept working for progressive causes and political candidates and election campaigns, including volunteering for Hillary’s 2016 campaign in Brooklyn. Sometimes he also got disillusioned by politics and world events, he is human after all. His commentary on philosophy, world affairs and politics, informed by his studies, sometimes make its way into his writing.
He did his MA in European and Russian Studies at University of Toronto. He took courses in many things related to the whole region: culture, literature, politics, history. For his grad internship, he worked in a legal aid NGO for asylum seekers in Sofia, Bulgaria. He spent a summer in the Balkans. He did a semester abroad in Russia, at Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He has fond memories of his time in Moscow, but of course, those are now tainted with the sad shadow of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war. He wishes things had gone different. He planned on researching regional integration in Central Asia but had to return to Canada with the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.
He has been a lifelong traveler, and has been to 75 countries, in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Central Asia. He can’t wait to travel to the parts of the world he has not yet been to.
He has also been a lifelong language learner. He speaks English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi to fluent or advanced level; He also speaks other languages to various extent, that he leared through his studies or travels: Russian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian, German, Dutch, Polish, Ukrainian, Farsi, Arabic. His mother tongue is Punjabi, but he dreams in Italian. He is always looking to practice them, keep them in shape lest he forgets them, and learn new languages, so he’s always up for practice and conversation.
In his free time he likes to live the good life (who doesn’t?), watching interesting movies and tv series, reading books, going to nice concerts, discovering new places in the city, meditating about life in solitude but also meeting new people and trying out new things and foods, and dancing a little. Despite everything, he tries to be optimistic.
He has been living and working in Montreal since 2022, and has been loving it so far. He works as a public servant by day and at night he writes and explores the city. He is a regular at both English and French open-mics and literary events there, and is currently working on his first novel about his trucking days in Canada and United States.
Feel free to say hi if you see him.
Photo cred: P. C.
A. Daniyal 