Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Sadaf Khan, migrated to Sydney, Australia with her husband and three young children in 2003. It was in a creative writing course at Macquarie University, in 2006, where she secured a Distinction for writing a collection of 12 poems, in, what she claims, about two hours, that she realized that poetry had her back. Some of those 12 poems are a part of this collection. If it wasn’t for a Bucket list she made in 2017, while working as a full time English teacher in one of Lahore’s IB schools, binding herself to publish her writing within the next five years, this collection and website would not be here.
In the last two decades she has grown, what she likes to call ‘a number of octopus limbs’: raised three children with her husband; secured an MA in English Literature and a Diploma in Education from Macquarie University, Sydney; passionately taught English, full-time, in both countries; started a safety education campaign for young children in Pakistan, and, whenever she has had the time to pause, process and ponder over it all, she has turned to the blank page to write some of the poems in this collection.
On sad afternoons is the first publication of Sadaf’s free verse poems. Settled currently in the Hills district of Sydney, Sadaf hopes to publish and teach more of her writings in the days to come.