Ilona Yusuf

Ilona Yusuf is a poet, editor, designer, and printmaker. Her first poetry collection, Picture This, was published by Alhamra Publishing in 2001. Since then, her work has appeared in numerous local and international journals—both online and in print—including The Atlanta Review, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Papercuts, The Aleph Review, Sugar Mule, and The Missing Slate. Over her career, she has edited for three literary journals: The Alhamra Literary Review; Vallum’s Special Pakistan Issue (2011); and, since 2017, she has served as Associate Editor of The Aleph Review, an annual Pakistani art and literature journal publishing local and international voices. She has also written widely on art, artists, and writers for several local arts and features magazines, and contributed numerous essays on Pakistani English poetry to international publications as well as to OUP’s Pakistan’s Radioactive Decade. Her most recent editorial work is Poetry in English from Pakistan: A 21st Century Anthology for Alhamra Publishing. Since the early 2000s, she has curated poetry readings featuring her own and others’ work and has moderated sessions at literary festivals both within Pakistan—particularly in Karachi and Lahore—and abroad. After a long hiatus, she is currently exploring the creation of artist’s books that combine text and image.