Born in Istanbul to Iranian parents, Solmaz 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 debut collection LOOK was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award and 2017 PEN Open Book Award. Sharif has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.
The Lunch Poems series, founded by Professor Robert Hass, is under the direction of Professor Geoffrey G. O'Brien.
Support for this series is provided by Dr. and Mrs. Tom Colby, the Library, The Morrison Library Fund, the dean's office of the College of Letters and Sciences, the English Department, and the Townsend Center for the Humanities. These events are also partially supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received from The James Irvine Foundation.