Shadab Zeest Hashmi

Poet Shadab Zeest Hashmi grew up in Peshawar, Pakistan. She moved to the United States to attend Reed College, where she earned her BA, writing a poetry thesis that considered postcolonial Pakistani identity. Hashmi’s books of poetry also meditate on the often-fraught political and cultural exchanges between the United States, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. She is the author of the poetry collections Baker of Tarifa (2010), which won a San Diego Book Award for Poetry, and Kohl & Chalk (2013), winner of a San Diego Book Award. Hashmi’s essays on poetic forms such as the ghazal and qasida have appeared widely, including in her book Ghazal Cosmopolitan: The Culture & Craft of the Ghazal (2018), which Marilyn Hacker has called “a marvelous interweaving of poetry, scholarship, literary criticism and memoir.” She has also published essays on Muslim American issues. For 12 years, Hashmi edited the San Diego Magee Park Poets Anthology. An editor for MahMag World Literature and a columnist for 3 Quarks Daily, Hashmi has taught in the MFA program at San Diego State University.