I’m a freelance journalist, author and editor based in London, writing long-form reported features on a wide range of subjects – from the mystery of the Gatwick drone to the Pakistani military’s promotion of travel influencers, from the rise of hoarding disorder to an alleged hijacking off the coast of the Isle of Wight. I am based in the UK, but I’ve reported extensively from Pakistan, as well as from Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Kenya and Nigeria. I am HEFAT trained.
I’m a regular contributor to the Guardian Long Read. I also write for other publications, including the Guardian Saturday Magazine, Prospect, Al-Jazeera. My reporting has won multiple awards – most recently a One World Media award in 2023, and a Foreign Press Association award in 2021. In 2019, I was a fellow at MacDowell, and I’ve twice been a media fellow with Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Social Difference. I co-authored the Dart Centre’s guidelines for reporting on conflict-based sexual violence.
In addition to writing, I have extensive experience as an editor, having worked at the New Statesman magazine from 2008-12, and then at the New Humanist (first as deputy editor, then as editor-in-chief) from 2014-23.
My first book, Karachi Vice is published by Granta in the UK and Melville House in the US. It was a Radio 4 Book of the Week. In the Mail on Sunday, Razia Iqbal said: “A brilliant portrait of a complex place … In some senses, the book is like a novel; each character is so beautifully drawn that we are in their heads with ease, though that is often a hard place to be.” You can read more about the book here.
I’m available for commissions and editing work and can be contacted at samira.shackle@gmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter @samirashackle. My literary agent is Carrie Plitt at Felicity Bryan Associates.
