Born in New York City to a Pushtun father and an Irish mother, Burki grew up in Pakistan. After college in the America, she returned to Peshawar, Pakistan, to contribute to the war effort against the Soviets across the border. She ended up working for USAID on development projects along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.  It was a Ken Follett paperback ("Lie Down With Lions"), borrowed from the American Club library in Peshawar, which led to this story. Fiction is a wonderful medium to tell stories based on actual events. 

Burki has published articles in scholarly journals on Al Qaeda and other movements. Her first non-fiction book, "The Politics of State Intervention: Gender Politics in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran" was published by Lexington Books in 2013 and was "highly recommended" by CHOICE.