Hum by Sanam Sheriff

About the book:

Winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry

The word “hum” in Urdu can mean both “we” and “I.” In English, it’s a gesture of sound—a vibration. Sanam Sheriff’s HUM is a trans call to the beauty of attempt rather than the clarity of arrival. This book seeks as the pilgrim seeks, wandering from a plural sense of self with a lyric attunement to the wound’s power.

Following a queer, trans, Muslim speaker who grew up in southern India and migrated to the United States, Sheriff’s debut collection invites us to listen: to how yearning for a country blurs with yearning for a beloved; to how exile, for queer and trans people, is where the body itself becomes a place of dignity and prayer.

Enriched by Urdu lyric traditions of love, and love mourned, HUM raises the queer erotic to the heavens, even as the grief of separation lingers as paradise lost. Here, Sheriff weaves together the two most potent threads of human life: pain and love, strummed until they sing.

About the author:

Sanam Sheriff is a queer poet, performer, and educator from Bangalore, India. Their debut poetry collection HUM (University of Nebraska Press, 2026)won the Backwaters Prize in Poetry. Currently, Sanam teaches creative writing at Haverford College. Her work has been published in Poetry Magazine, Poem-a-Day, The Rumpus, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, Outlook India, and elsewhere.Sanam holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. From 2022-2025, they served as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Bryn Mawr College. Sanam lives in Philadelphia, where they curate The Poets' Studio at Twelve Gates Arts.

The conversation will be moderated by Taylor Johnson.

Taylor Johnson is from Washington, DC. He is the author of Inheritance (Alice James Books, 2020), winner of the 2021 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America and a 2024 Whiting Award. His work appears in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Baffler, Scalawag, and elsewhere. Johnson is a Cave Canem graduate fellow and a recipient of the 2017 Larry Neal Writers’ Award from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the 2021 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging Writers from Lambda Literary. Taylor was the inaugural 2022 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. From 2022-2025, he was the Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland. With his wife, Elizabeth Bryant, and the poet Simon Shieh, Taylor curated and founded the Green Way Reading Series at People’s Book in Takoma Park. Taylor was the 2025-2026 Hackerman Writer in Residence at the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. Please contact events@lostcitybookstore.com with questions.

Dato de accesibilidad: Este evento toma lugar en el segundo piso y Lost City Books no tiene ascensor. Favor de contactar events@lostcitybookstore.com con cualquiera duda.