Ayesha Raees

Discipline: Poetry

Based In: Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan

Year at Millay: 2018

Awards/Honors: Broken River Prize, Platypus Press, Shropshire, England (2023); Fellow, 2020 Mentorship Lab Fellowship, Kundiman, New York, NY (2020); Fellow, Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, Brooklyn Poets, Brooklyn, NY (2019); Fellow, The Margins Fellowship, The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, New York, NY (2018–2019).

Website: https://www.ayesharaees.com/

Ayesha Raees عائشہ رئیس is a poet and artist identifying as a hybrid creating hybrid poetry through hybrid forms. Her interdisciplinary work places poetry at its center and delves into paint, film, sound, theater, performance, and collaboration with the intention of breaking conventional ideas of linear language, form, and genre to materialize a space of belonging for marginalia and their narratives. Her work strongly revolves around issues of belonging and dislocation, G/god and spirituality, and beauty::cruelty while possessing a strong agency for decolonial, anti-violence, and anti-erasure practices. She edits poetry at The Margins and has received endorsements from Asian American Writers Workshop, Kundiman, Brooklyn Poets, UNESCO, and elsewhere. Her work has been published extensively, including Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, The Nation, Poets.org, and others. Her first book of poems Coining A Wishing Tower won the Broken River Prize and was published by Radix in 2024. She is based in New York City and Lahore, Pakistan (and many other unsettled spaces).