(1915-2003)
Alys Faiz was a Pakistani poet, writer, journalist, human rights activist, social worker and a teacher. Alys was born in London, but she later became an established citizen of Pakistan. She was the wife of a renowned Urdu Poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Alys traveled to Subcontinent in 1938 to visit her sister, and, when World War II broke out, she decided to make the subcontinent her home. Alys Faiz had joined the Communist Party of Britain when she was only 16. She also served as secretary to Mr. Krishna Menon, who was then in London, and took an active part inthe subcontinent’s independence struggle. She joined The Pakistan Times in 1950 and looked after the women’s and children’s sections of the newspaper. She joined the newspaper’s regular staff in 1951 after the arrest of her husband in the so-called Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case. She also started the newspaper’s reference section. Mrs. Faiz taught special children in Karachi when her family settled there in the late 1950s. She started working for UNICEF when Faiz moved to Islamabad. She joined the weekly Viewpoint after the family returned to Lahore following a period living abroad in Beirut.