Maryam graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 2008. Her A.B degree is in Comparative Literature with certificates in Creative Writing and European Cultural Studies. Her senior thesis was awarded both the Robert and Lynn Fagles Translation Prize, as well as the Asher Hinds Prize for the best thesis in European Cultural Studies. At UCLA, she has been awarded the GSRM for a paper exploring the the problem of secular representation in contemporary Pakistani film and literature, as well as the Dissertation Year Fellowship for the year 2012-13. She is currently writing her doctoral dissertation, "Translated Orientalisms: from the eighteenth-century English Oriental tale to the nineteenth-century Urdu reformist novel."  Maryam has also served on the Comparative Literature Grad Student Committee and on the GSA Humanities Council. In her free time, she enjoys being a foodie and blogging about "great books."