As a fellow in DreamYard's 2023 Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, I’m reading a couple of my poems on Thursday, June 22, 2023 from 6:00-7:00pm ET online over Zoom along with 10 amazing poets. Hosted by Ellen Hagan and Andy Powell, the public fellows reading is the culmination of two days of a generative and transformative poetry intensive for emerging poets who center community in their work, both on and off the page.

If you’re able to attend in-person in NYC, please join the program at DreamYard Art Center (1085 Washington Ave, Bronx, NY 10456).

Please join us by registering here.

An Assembly of Moths: Afghanistan One Year Later

A Gathering Through Art

Streamed live August 25, 2022 at 12pm EDT.

Featured artists include: filmmaker Ali Baluch, violinists Trina Basu & Arun Ramamurthy, rabab player Qais Essar, poet Seelai Karzai, dancer Parul Shah, interdisciplinary artist Zelikha Shoja, poet Liala Zaray, and more.

August 15, 2022 marks the one-year anniversary of the precipitous events in Afghanistan. The Afghan American Artists & Writers Association (AAAWA), in collaboration with City Lore, presents a gathering of Afghan and Afghan American artists and friends to reflect on this moment and to collectively affirm our humanity, preservation, and imagination through music, poetry, visual art, and dance. We come together in community and for community. We come together out of love and grief, and yet more love. We assemble with the ferocity of moths toward that which is most luminous and most enduring.

The event is free, though we welcome donations to support AAAWA’s work in advocating for and amplifying the work of artists of Afghan heritage.

Assembly of Moths takes its title from a poem of the same name by Khalilullah Khalili. The poster was designed by Mohammad Sabir.

Watch the full event here.

Please join us online for the 2021 Tell It Slant Poetry Festival presented by the Emily Dickinson Museum. Seelai Karzai will be co-leading a workshop with Sahar Muradi called "The Poetry of Witness and Subversion" on Saturday, September 25 at 3pm ET. We look forward to connecting and writing with you!

This event is free and open to the public, but seats are limited and registration is required.

Come join us for a night of outstanding poetry and short fiction, featuring Seelai Karzai and Will Alden! MC-ed by Nic Anstett. Hosted by the University of Oregon’s MFA students in poetry and fiction.

This event is free and open to all. Learn more here.

In his “The Witness of Poetry,” the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz reflects on the idea of poetry as both a “participant and witness” in “the major transformations of our time” and that poetry “witnesses us.” This hour-long generative workshop will introduce you first to the poetics and poetry of witness. Then, we will discuss the themes of displacement, war trauma, gender, and sexual identities in selected poems and audio clips. Finally, through a generative exercise and a writing prompt, we will write poems that 'witness us.’

Learn more about entire 2-day conference schedule and register here.

Join the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association (AAAWA) for a dynamic panel discussion “Reimagining Queer Futures: Afghans and Art in the Diaspora” on Friday, October 30, 2020 at 11am PT / 2pm ET. Our participants, Qais, Bobuq, and Wazina, will share stories on how creativity and the arts are being mobilized by the LGBTQ Afghan diaspora as a form of resistance and community-building in the face of oppression.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Update: View or listen to a recording of the panel Resistance and Complicity to Empire Through Political Movements here.

Join Harvard Divinity School students, prominent academics, and practitioners seeking to interrogate and reimagine gender and Islam in theory and practice. This event is independently organized by HDS students and sponsored by the Office of Student Life and The Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life. It will be held in the Sperry Room located in Andover Hall on 45 Francis Ave.

Learn more about the panels and RSVP here.