Timsal Masud is a lecturer of Hindi-Urdu, translator, editor, and textbook author. He completed a Ph.D. at Lucknow University in 2008, where he studied trends in Urdu translations of modern Persian short stories. Since completing his Ph.D., he has continued to remain interested in translation, publishing Urdu translations of The Little Prince and Patrick Süskind’s The Story of Mr. Sommer. While teaching language classes, he noticed the need for a concise, user-friendly Urdu dictionary. This inspired him to write the Essential Urdu Dictionary (Hodder & Stoughton. 2015).  He has also revised Complete Urdu (Hodder & Stoughton. 2014), and co-edited (with Dr. Syed Akbar Hyder) Urdu-namah (City Press: 2020), an intermediate-advanced reader of Urdu texts for the classroom. In recent years, his research interests have turned towards the study of the literature of Awadh, including Wajid Ali Shah’s literary work and the works of Mir Anis, particularly his marsiya (elegy). As part of an effort to ensure Awadh’s literature reaches a wider public, he is currently editing and translating a series of books about Wajid Ali Shah’ works to the Devanagari script. The first book, Lucknow Ka Shahi Stage (The Royal Stage of Lucknow), came out in 2019 and the second one, Wajid Ali Shah (The last king of Awadh) will appear in 2021 with Aakhar Prakashan Press. A three-volume edition of Mir Anis’s marsiya is forthcoming from City Press, Karachi. The collection will include a critical introduction. Lastly, Masud has published on translation, Awadh history and literature, and more generally Urdu literature in The Journal of Urdu Studies, Duniyazad, and Aaj. Prior to joining Columbia University, Masud taught Hindi and Urdu at The University of Texas at Austin and The University of Chicago.