Qais Akbar Omar is the author of the memoir, A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story and co-author of Shakespeare in Kabul. In 2007, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado, researching eco-sensitive methods of carpet production, and he has lectured on Afghan carpets in Afghanistan, Europe, and the United States. He is a 2014–15 Scholars at Risk fellow at Harvard University.