Many years ago, I was a heartbroken pre-medicine major trying to juggle a double major in creative writing and biochemistry.Â
I'll never forget the day I attended a departmental “brown bag” meeting and watched a scientist caress a very tall, plastic DNA model and she gushed over how beautiful and intricate it was.
My Story...
By then, I was three years into college and completing a summer fellowship in a lab focused on the properties of self-splicing RNA.Â
I was sitting with people who LOVED science. Breathed science. Were LIT UP by science.Â
I could no longer escape the truth: the passion this scientist expressed about her plastic DNA helix matched my passion for poetry. I loved writing - and wanted to live and breathe it, too.Â
Fast forward through a B.Phil in English Writing/Poetry, an MAT degree in Instruction & Learning, several years of public school teaching, followed by several more years with The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.Â
Then, at last, my return to graduate school to pursue an MFA degree in creative writing - specifically, in poetry.Â
And the writing, of course - trying to read and write poetry while my infant slept. While I worked part-time. While I worked full-time. While I cared for my ill father. While a pandemic isolated us.
And here I am, many years and two full-length poetry books later, firmly at the intersection of my greatest passions: education and creative writing.
Having a chance to share that with you, wherever you are literally and figuratively - now that is a beautiful thing.Â
Now, I help poets like you shift from feeling alone, confused, or stuck toward a thriving writing practice with clear, targeted steps designed to help you write more, revise strategically, and submit for publication with confidence.
Now it’s your turn: gain the knowledge and skills that will help you bring your poems to fruition. I’m here to help you along your journey!
FAVE HOT DRINK:
Homemade chai with cloves, cardamom pods, cinnamon sticks, & ginger, topped off with milk.
ADDICTED TO:
Gardening! Herbs, greens, fruits, perennials….
FIND ME:
Tending the Pollinator Garden (a monarch waystation!) with my town’s horticultural society.
"Your enthusiasm, excellent listening, preparation, generous sharing, and encouragement are such a potent combination for an educator. Your creative writing students are in for a top notch mind-expanding experience."
Richard, Tacoma, WA
"In a few hours, you opened many windows into the craft strategies at play in iconic poems. Your deft discussions and detailed handouts gave me practical strategies to use in my reading and writing practices. Thank you!"
Jeffrey, Durham, NC
"Working with you gave me more confidence. I love your teaching style & felt encouraged to keep going with the feedback I got from other attendees too."
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Ronit, Seattle
"I find so much value in your clear modeling, focused attention, & generous feedback. I think this work with you is helping me become a better teacher as well as a better writer. I'm so grateful."
Betsy, Greater Philly
MY POEMS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN
OFFICIAL BIO:Â
Dilruba (Ruba) Ahmed is the author of Bring Now the Angels (Pitt Poetry Series), with poems featured in New York Times Magazine, The Slowdown, and Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ă“ Tuama. Her debut book of poetry, Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press), won the Bakeless Prize. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, & Virginia Quarterly Review. Her poems have also been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2019 (Scribner); Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books); New Moons: Contemporary Writing by North American Muslims (Red Hen Press); They Rise Like A Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets (Blue Oak Press); Border Lines: Poems of Migration (Knopf); Literature: The Human Experience (Bedford/St. Martin’s); and elsewhere. Â
Ahmed is the recipient of The Florida Review’s Editors’ Award, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Prize, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Fellowship in Poetry awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. In Fall 2023, she served as the Blanche Armfield Poet in the Creative Writing Program at UNC-Chapel Hill. In Spring 2024, she was the featured writer at the 26th annual Literary Festival at Penn State-Brandywine.
Ahmed holds B.Phil and M.A.T. degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. A former project manager with The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Ahmed has taught with Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers, Chatham University’s MFA Program, Bryn Mawr College, Hugo House in Seattle, and workshops across the U.S. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of creative writing at Swarthmore College.Â
Think we just might make creative magic together?
Explore ways to work with me so we can make your poetry writing dreams come true.
