Fathima Cader's writing has has appeared in The New Inquiry, The Funambulist, Hazlitt, and elsewhere.
She currently teaches at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto. Her previous teaching appointments have included serving as a Visiting Professor at the City University of New York.
She was raised in Pottuvil, Aylesbury, and Jeddah. These days, she is based mostly in Toronto. Place is her favourite obsession.
Her large-scale writing projects currently span a novel, essay collection, and poetry collection.
Select Writing
Book Chapters
- "A Question of Survival," Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War, Ed. Bhakti Shringarpure and Veruska Cantelli (New Delhi: Zubaan, 2023).
- "Neighbours," The Unpublished City II, Eds. Phoebe Wang, Canisia Lubrin, and Dionne Brand (Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2018).
Essays and Reviews
- "Shakthidharan's memoir of Sri Lanka's unfinished war and its afterlives," Himal Magazine, 2026.
- "Armed with October," Africa Is a Country, 2025, co-authored with Khaldah Salih.
- "Armed with October: Thawra and Poetry, from Khartoum to Toronto," ArabLit, 2025, co-authored with Khaldah Salih.
- "Constellations of Coresistance: Reflections on Tamil and Palestinian Solidarity from Turtle Island," TWAIL Review, 2024, co-authored with Sujith Xavier.
- "Sri Lanka's multiple crises just came to a head," Washington Post, 2022, co-authored with Zachariah Mampilly.
- "Elegy," Guernica, 2021.
- "No More Death Work," The Funambulist, 2021.
- "Our Grievous Work," Guernica, 2020.
- "Stranger Kinships," Adi, 2020.
- "In Memory's Wake: Remembering A Sivanandan," Verso Books, 2019.
- "A Rising Tide: Fighting Tamil Refugee Detention in Canada," Rungh, 2018.
- "Terror's Lawfare," The New Inquiry, 2017.
- "Labor of Faith: Migrant Work and Exploitation in Makkah," The Funambulist, 2017.
- "Why Humanizing Tamil Refugees Won't Solve the World's Migration Problems," The FADER, 2016.
- "The View from Madinah," Hazlitt, 2016.
- "A Question of Survival," Warscapes, 2015.
- "Tamil, tiger, terrorist? Anti-migrant hysteria and the criminalisation of asylum seekers," Briarpatch, 2011.
Poetry
- "The Vulture is a Patient Bird," Apogee Journal, 2014.
Peer-Reviewed Academic Articles
- "Made You Look: Niqabs, the Muslim Canadian Congress, and R v NS," Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice, 2013.
Select Arts Residencies
Select Grants
- 2025: Ontario Arts Council, Literary Creations Projects Grant
- 2024: Canada Council for the Arts, Explore and Create Program, Research and Creation Grant
- 2024: Ontario Arts Council, Literary Creations Projects Grant
- 2024: Toronto Arts Council, Writers Grant
- 2022: Canada Council for the Arts, Explore and Create Program, Research and Creation Grant
- 2022: Ontario Arts Council, Literary Creations Projects Grant
Select Academic Appointments
- 2024-ongoing: Academic Director, Parkdale Community Legal Services, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.
- 2014-2022: Sessional Instructor, University of Windsor, Faculty of Law.
- 2020: Visiting Professor/McMurtry Fellow, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.
- 2019: Visiting Professor, Beyond Identity Program, Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, City College of New York, City University of New York.
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