Azra Liaqat Khan

Azra Liaqat Khan is a scholar, organizer, and author who has written and spoken widely about the intersection of race, militarism, and empire. She is currently working on a memoir that explores her years as a stripper in New York City at the time her parents were attempting to arrange her marriage. She hopes to see more literature and scholarly writing on sex work that is told by migrants and people of color and believes her memoir will make a crucial contribution to dismantling a “whore-archy” that often centers cis and white voices in literature. Before undertaking this project, Azra worked on sex worker advocacy campaigns in New York City and educational initiatives aimed at exposing the relationship between American racism and warfare. As a Muslim woman, her art embodies the claim that the personal is political. Khan's literature shows that the politics of militarism and US empire are evident everywhere, even in the most intimate corners of our lives: sex, work, and family.