On Thursday, October 26 at 10 am in Weis Cinema, Sahar Muradi will read from her debut poetry collection OCTOBERS (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023). The book touches on experiences of migration, empire, and loss, and looks at language as anchor, home, suspect, and, ultimately, a source of wild wonder. Reading and short discussion will be followed by a workshop exploring the subversive and liberatory qualities of the 7th century poetic form, the ghazal.

Sahar Muradi is author of the collection OCTOBERS, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the 2022 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She is author of the chapbook [ G A T E S ], the hybrid memoir Ask Hafiz (winner of the 2021 Patrons’ Prize for Emerging Artists from Thornwillow Press), and the chaplet A Garden Beyond My Hand.  She is co-editor, with Seelai Karzai, of EMERGENC(Y): Writing Afghan Lives Beyond the Forever War, An Anthology of Writing from Afghanistan and its Diaspora; and, with Zohra Saed, of One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature.  Sahar is the recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award in Poetry, a Stacy Doris Memorial Poetry Award, and twice recipient of the Himan Brown Poetry Award. Her writing has been supported by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Bethany Arts Community, Blue Mountain Center, Kundiman, and WOC Writers. She is co-founder of the Afghan American Artists & Writers Association, directs the arts education programs at City Lore, and dearly believes in the bottom of the rice pot.

Read more about Sahar’s work at saharmuradi.com.