Description

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NEITHER CREATED NOR DESTROYED explores the joy of "contradiction" in queer/trans-Muslim identity, lessons from the laws of thermodynamics, and diasporic longing. In their debut collection, poet-engineer Zara Jamshed draws on memoir, theater, chemistry, and physics to convey a queer Muslim disabled experience of global pandemic, religious practice, and relationships to family and lineage. This poetry book embodies the interconnected threads of culture and science, racism and environment, personal and communal justice, and the potential to remake hegemonic systems and structures. Jamshed uses the theatrical framing of ancestral visitations to explore chaotic and fragmented identity, journeying from the frayed gendered experience of Pakistani-American and Muslim diaspora from a post 9/11 New York City to the Bay Area to a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

About the Author

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Zara Jamshed is a queer, trans, disabled Pakistani American poet and engineer from New York City. They are the winner of the Penrose Poetry Prize for LGBTQIA+ writers and have work published in The Arrow, Keppel Health Review, Kiwi Collective Magazine, and the Protest Through Poetry Anthology. Zara is a 2022 Periplus Collective Fellow, an inaugural Kaleidoscope Writing Workshop participant with The Queer Ancestors Project and Still Here San Francisco, and was featured in Kearny Street Workshop's literary arts showcase at APAture 2021. Putting their engineering degree to use, Zara currently works to bring the economic and environmental benefits of solar energy to California's low-income renters. They live in Oakland, California.