Janeen Hayat

Biography

Janeen Hayat grew up in Florida, a place she loves and hates in equal measure. After studying English at Yale University and law at Harvard Law School, she left her native land with a pile of debt and a certainty that her British adventure would last about two years. Fifteen years and two careers later, she now lives in East London with her partner and three chaotic, incredible children. She's half-Pakistani, half-New Yorker, a lapsed lawyer, teacher, Muslim and Catholic. She's passionate about creating characters that are many things at once -- because she knows she's not alone in being a tangled mass of identities, always changing.

Evie and Maryam’s Family Tree, Janeen’s debut novel, won the Guppy Open Submission Competition in 2023 and was named as winner of the Younger Readers Category at the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize in 2026.  It was also shortlisted for the UKLA Book Awards, the Branford Boase Award, and The Week Junior Book Award in the Breakthrough category. Her second novel, Evie and Maryam's Little Lies, was released with Guppy in August 2026, and her third, Evie and Maryam's Hot Ticket, is coming summer 2027.