Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Sharif holds degrees from U.C. Berkeley, where she studied and taught with June Jordan’s “Poetry for the People,” and New York University. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, Gulf Coast, Boston Review and Witness.

Sharif is the former managing director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She was most recently selected to receive a 2014 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award as well as a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship.

Sharif is a lecturer at Stanford University. Her first poetry collection, “Look,” was a finalist for the National Book Award.