Basma Abdel Aziz has a BA in medicine and surgery, an MS in neuropsychiatry, and a diploma in sociology. She works for the General Secretariat of Mental Health in Egypt's Ministry of Health and the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture.
Abdel-Aziz gained second place for her short stories in the 2008 Sawiris Cultural Award, and a 2008 award from the General Organisation for Cultural Palaces. Her sociological examination of police violence in Egypt, Temptation of Absolute Power, won the Ahmed Bahaa-Eddin Award in 2009.
Her debut novel Al-Tabuur [The Queue] was published in 2013, and Melville House published an English translation by Elisabeth Jaquette in 2016.
In 2016 she was named one of Foreign Policy 's Leading Global Thinkers.[ In 2018 she was named by The Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute in the list of top influencers of Arabic public opinion.