Fatima Jafar is a writer from Karachi, currently based in Northern California. She is a 2024-2026 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College in 2023. She is also a recipient of the Kenyon Review Peter Taylor Fellowship. Her work has been published in The Kenyon Review, The Cortland Review, The Drift, Wasafiri, and elsewhere. She is working on her first full-length manuscript, ALL MY TREASURES.
Poetry
Chapbook
‘In the End of the Beginning of Our Lives’, The Best American Poetry 2025.
'Observation Fragment: Winter’, Poetry in English from Pakistan, Alhamra Publishers, December 2024.
Three Poems, The Kenyon Review, Spring 2024.
'Beach Avenue' and 'Self Portrait as Bedroom Diptych', The Cortland Review 92.
'Lone', 'Imprint' and 'Velvet', Wasafiri Vol. 28.
'GHOST POEM', Pleiades 43.2.
'Coin', The Drift Issue 8, November 2022.
'Outside of Glass', The Moth Winter Issue 2022.
‘On Desire’, Nimrod Journal Vol. 65, No. 2, Spring/Summer 2022.
'Blanket', Banshee Issue 13, Spring/Summer 2022.
‘June, Driving’, The Roadrunner Review June 2022.
'Prayer in Worcester by the Lake', Eunoia Review April 2022.
'Silence', The Shore Issue 12, December 2021.
'Sonnet / Photograph of Wild', Mass Poetry December 2021.
'Adult', The Sandy River Review November 2021.
'August' and 'Baby', Anti-Heroin Chic Issue 23, October 2021.
'Sonnet/ 1976', Pinch Issue 41.2, Fall 2021.
Being There, Bottlecap Features by Bottlecap Press, 2022.
“Each poem evokes the sense of the sacred in these hushed spaces, ranging from the insular world of childhood to the solitude of adulthood. The poet’s mother, the moon, and the movie theatre are all regarded as sites of magic. Of blessing. With a varied use of poetic forms, such as sonnets and ghazals, Being There functions as both a microscope and mirror, paying homage to the characters that color the poet’s world, in both real life and fiction. It serves as a prayer for them, and for each fragile moment that willed itself into remembrance.”
'Shaheen', Jamhoor, December 2020.
Other Writing
Peter Taylor Fellowship, The Kenyon Review, July 2023.
Best of the Net Nomination for 'Silence' in The Shore, September 2022.
Emerson College, Graduated Student Awards: awarded a High Distinction in Poetry for one poem, 'Reckless Duplex'.
Fellowships/
Nominations/
Awards
Write me an email at fjafar@stanford.edu.
Contact