His first novel, Jaagein Hain Khawab Mein (Urdu: جاگے ہیں خواب میں, Englis: "Awake in a dream") had 1001 paintings by Wasi Haider as its cover page.

His second novel Jandar (Urdu: جندر), published in 2017, received the UBL Literary Award for Fiction (2019).

Akhtar Raza Saleemi was born on 16 June 1974, at Kekot, a village of Haripur district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Saleemi started his literary career in 1991 with a story written for children edition of Daily Jang.

In this span he wrote some stories, critical and non-critical essays, however, at the behest of Ahmad Hussain Mujahid, he started doing poetry in the genre of ghazal.

[3] Another critic wrote, "Saleemi portrays a unique blend of reality and dreams expressed with exacerbated sensibility, fine sharpness of his perception, clarity, and splendour of his language.

"[7] To fully express himself, Saleemi found Ghazal insufficiant, therefore, he forsook it in 2008 and started experimenting with another and more relaxed form of poetry, nazm.

[8]Meanwhile, he joined the Pakistan Academy of Letters (Islamabad) in 2006 and has been working as an Urdu editor since 2013 of Quarterly Magazine Adbiyat and Adbiyat-e-Itfal, also being the pioneer of the latter.

In addition to this, he acts as a coordinating editor of six magazines issued by the Pakistan Academy of Letters: Adbiyat-e-Sindh (Sindhi), Adbiyat-e-Balochistan (Baloch), Adbiyat-e-KhyberPakhtunkhwa (Pashto, Hindko), Adbiyat-e-Punjab (Punjabi, Siraiki, Potohari) and Pakistani Literature (English).