Aisha Sharif

Poet Aisha Sharif is a Cave Canem fellow living near Kansas City, Missouri. In many ways, much of her poetry and nonfiction addresses the politics of “bordering identities.” As an African-American Muslim woman originally from the south, her work explores how racial, gender, and religious identities align, separate, and blend. Her poem, “Vanna White Reconsiders Her Pact with Her Jinn” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019 and her poem “Why I Can Dance Down a Soul Train Line and Still be Muslim” was nominated in 2015. Her first book of poetry, To Keep From Undressing, was released by Spark Wheel Press in 2019. In this show we talk about the bordering identities she explores in her poems, how they express her own lived experiences, and where her poetic muses are calling her now.