Sanam Sheriff is a queer poet, performer, and educator from Bangalore, India. Their debut poetry collection HUM ہم won the Backwaters Press Poetry Prize and will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in October, 2026. Currently, Sanam teaches Creative Writing at Haverford College.

Sanam’s work has been published in Poetry Magazine, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Daily, The Rumpus, Indiana Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Adroit Journal, Outlook India, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman, Tin House, and Kenyon Review scholar, and a Thomas J. Watson fellow.

Sanam holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and is the Editor in Chief of the anthology On Liminality. From 2022-2025, they served as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College and organized the Reading Series. Sanam lives in Philadelphia, where they curate The Poets’ Studio at Twelve Gates Arts.