Farida Shaghasi was raised in Kabul during Afghanistan’s intellectual and cultural flourishing prior to the Soviet invasion. Surrounded by books, debate, music, and education, she studied physics before political upheaval forced her into exile. Her journey took her across Afghanistan into Pakistan, followed by a year and a half in Europe, navigating displacement, illness, and asylum systems before eventually resettling in the United States. In the U.S., she built a career as a systems engineer and later held IT leadership roles across the private and public sectors, working in complex systems, infrastructure, and organizational resilience. She is also the co-founder of two nonprofit organizations, working as a volunteer. One supports Afghan refugee integration in the United States through resettlement and educational assistance, and another, which she currently leads as CEO, provides food and emergency relief to vulnerable families in Afghanistan, particularly in disaster-affected regions. Her writing draws from lived experience, memory, and exile, exploring how displacement reshapes identity, belonging, and one’s understanding of freedom. When the Peaks Fell Silent is her first book.