Introduction
about
Sehba Sarwar is a writer, multidisciplinary artist, and activist, currently based in Houston, USA. She moves between the city of her birth, Karachi, Pakistan, where she spent the first half of her life in a home filled with artists, activists and educators, and her adopted city, Houston, where she has recreated a community similar to the one in which she was raised. Her writings have appeared in anthologies, newspapers, and magazines in India, Pakistan, and the US, and her work (writings, installations and videos) explore displacement and women’s issues, moving between South Asia and the US.
Sarwar's first novel, Black Wings was published in 2004 (Alhamra Publishing, Pakistan), and her short stories have appeared in anthologies including And The World Changed (Feminist Press, New York) and in Neither Night Nor Day (Harper Collins, India). Alongside her fiction, Sarwar has published a wide range of essays in publications including The News on Sunday, The New York Times’ Sunday Magazine and Callaloo, while her poetry has been published in anthologies in Pakistan and the US.
In addition to her writings, Sarwar serves as artististic/ founding director of Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB), a non-profit arts-activist organization in Houston, USA, through which she has created a series of video collages that have been screened in Pakistan, India, Egypt and the US. In an attempt to document the multiple lives she lives - writer, artist, mother, activist, dual citizen - Sarwar maintains a blog, Daily Noise, where she posts images, video and words.
Sarwar is an active voice at Houston's KPFT Pacifica Radio 90.1 FM. She continues to teach writing and multidisciplinary arts workshops at all levels, in both Pakistan and in the US. Currently, she's working on a variety of projects including her second novel, a collection of essays, and she directs Voices Breaking Boundaries' living room art series, productions that juxtapose the cultures, joys and struggles in Karachi and Houston.
A member of Sandra Cisneros' Macondo Writers' Workshop, Sarwar serves on the boards of Voices Breaking Boundaries and Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.