Ishrat Afreen (b. 1956), who was born 65 years ago on December 25, moved from Pakistan to India and then to the USA, and retired from teaching at the University of Texas. She has her own official website, and has been publishing her poems since she was fifteen. On April 30, 2021, she reached a unique milestone among her contemporary poets who were born in the 1950s: the golden jubilee of her poetic career, a distinction which is hers alone. Three of her collections have been published, one in the 1980s, Kunj Peele Phoolon Ka (The Grove of Yellow Flowers) and two, more recently, in 2005 and 2017: Dhoop Apne Hisse Ki (My Share of Sunlight) and Diya Jalaati Shaam (Lamp-lit Evening). All her existing collections of poetry were published as Zard Patton Ka Ban (The Forest of Yellow Leaves) in 2017. One can watch her perform her poetry in the public domain. She is giving final touches to her new poetic work Parinde Chahchahate Hain (The Birds Are Chirping). Her poems published in Rukhsana Ahmed’s anthology, Beyond Belief: Contemporary Feminist Urdu Poetry (1990), deployed a rawness that consciously gendered the poetic experience.