Dilruba Ahmed was born in the United States and grew up in western Pennsylvania and rural Ohio.

[4][5] Dilruba Ahmed's first poetry collection Dhaka Dust (Graywolf Press, 2011) won the Bakeless Prize awarded by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

Martin's), Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books), and An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas).

[9] Her poem, "The 18th Century Weavers of Muslin Whose Thumbs Were Chopped" deals with colonial repression by the British Raj in the Bengal.

[10] Ahmed's second book, Bring Now the Angels, was selected by Ed Ochester for the Pitt Poetry Series and will be published by University of Pittsburgh Press in April 2020.