After her mother graduated the family finally settled in Los Angeles, California, when Sharif was 11 years old.

[3] At sixteen years old, Sharif attended an Iranian Feminist Conference, facilitated by Angela Davis.

[5] She has also received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, Stanford University, and the Poetry Foundation.

[4] Some early influences include poems by Walt Whitman, which her mother would read to her as bedtime stories.

[3] Look, Sharif's first book, "asks us to see the ongoing costs of war as the unbearable losses of human lives and also the insidious abuses against our everyday speech.

"[12] Look draws on the U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, and challenges readers to confront the war's effects on language.