Tahir Hamut was born in 1969 in a small town near Kashgar, in the southwest of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. He published his first poem in 1986, and has since been recognized as one of the foremost modernist poets writing in Uyghur. His poetry has appeared in translation in Asymptote, Off the Coast, Crazy Horse, and elsewhere. Since the late ’90s he has worked as a film director, founding his own production company and achieving recognition for his feature films, documentaries, and other projects. He currently lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and two daughters.