We are excited to introduce September’s featured Poet of the Month: Dilruba (Ruba) Ahmed!
Dilruba will give a reading and lead us through a generative writing workshop from 7pm-8:30pm on September 16th, 2025 at 12Gates, located at 106 N 2nd St. Doors open at 6:30pm and close promptly at 7pm.

Curated by Sanam Sheriff, THE POETS' STUDIO is a monthly gathering for local poets who are interested in writing, sharing, and connecting through poetry. This event is free and open to all who are interested in engaging more deeply with lyric and the written word. 

Sanam Sheriff is a queer poet, artist, and educator from Bangalore, India. Their debut poetry collection “Hum ہم” (University of Nebraska Press) will be published in the fall of 2026. Sanam has received support from the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Kundiman, Tin House, the Fine Arts Work Center, and The Watering Hole. Sanam’s work has been published or is forthcoming in POETRY, Indiana Review, The Rumpus, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Academy of American Poets, The Offing, Outlook India, and elsewhere. Sanam holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. For the past three years, they served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College where they organized the Reading Series. Sanam is currently Editor in Chief of the anthology ‘On Liminality’, forthcoming January 2026 with Seventh Wave.

This Month’s Poet is Dilruba (Ruba) Ahmed, who will be giving a reading and leading us through this September’s writing workshop where poets will have the opportunity to generate and share new work.

Dilruba (Ruba) Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry), with poems featured in New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, and Poetry Unbound.  Her debut book, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize.  Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Virginia Quarterly Review.  Her work has also been anthologized in Best American Poetry; Halal If You Hear Me; New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims; They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets; and elsewhere. 

Ahmed received The Florida Review’s Editors’ Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She holds B.Phil and M.A.T. degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers.  She has taught with Chatham University’s MFA Program, Bryn Mawr College, Swarthmore College, Hugo House, and elsewhere.  In 2021, she joined the faculty at Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. www.dilrubaahmed.com