Iftikhar Naseem ‘Ifti’ was born on 15 Sep 1946 in Lyallpur, Pakistan and later moved to the U.S. He committed his life to writing, and has published and performed poetry in English, Urdu and Punjabi all over the world. Narman is one of his most renowned books (‘Narman’ means hermaphrodite or ‘half-man, half-woman’ in Persian)-a poetry collection that was the first open expression of homosexual themes in the Urdu language.

He wrote two collections of Urdu poems and received an honorary Doctorate of Literature from the World Peace Academy of Delaware. He co-founded Sangat/Chicago, a South Asian LBGT organization and support group. A popular speaker on sexual diversity at different universities across the globe, Nasim also received the R.N. Tagore Award. He was a past president of South Asian Performing Arts Council of America and was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame in 1996. He later released Myrmecophile in 2000 and Abdoz in 2005.

Ifti Nasim died in a hospital in Chicago on July 22, 2011 following a heart attack, at the age of 64.