Tamim Ansary is the author of the memoir West of Kabul, East of New York, co-author with Farah Ahmadi of the New York Times bestseller The Other Side of the Sky, and has been a major contributing writer to several secondary school history textbooks. Ansary is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop. He writes for Encarta.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, Edutopia, Parade, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.