Sahar Romani is a poet and educator. She received her MA in South Asian Studies from University of Washington and her PhD in Geography from Oxford University. Her academic and ethnographic essays appear in Gender Place & Culture and South Asia. After an exciting sojourn in the social sciences, Sahar returned to school to hone her craft as a poet. She is currently an MFA candidate at New York University, where she is a Writer in the Public Schools fellow. Her poems appear in The Offing, Asian American Writers’ Workshops, and 92Y’s Podium. Born in Seattle, she lives in Queens, New York.
On the Dr. Malathy Singh Visiting Fellowship at Yale University:
The Singh Fellowship was a capacious period for me after graduate school. It opened up much needed time and space to reflect over my work and practice as an academic and also reconsider my desires and goals for the future. Surrounded by kind and inspiring colleagues and scholars, I spent the year both writing from my doctoral research as well as broadening my inquiry and pedagogy in teaching. During the fall semester, I co-taught a course with the department chair; this was an incredible and rare opportunity for me to be in collaboration with a more seasoned professor, after which I taught my own course in the Spring semester. My time as a fellow confirmed my joy and commitment to classroom teaching. During my fellowship, I also decided to change course from an academic path in geography and return to my life long passion: poetry. The fellowship enabled me to realize my interests beyond social sciences. After my fellowship, I returned to school to pursue an MFA in poetry at NYU. Currently, I am writing a series of poems that draw from my ethnographic and academic research. As I move forward, I plan to continue build my life as a poet as well as a teacher.