Born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon during the war, Ashraf came to the United States in 1998 to pursue his graduate studies at Syracuse University. His poetry has been featured in the Mad Poets Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal and Islamica magazine, and has been selected for inclusion in several anthologies including Queering Language, Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets, and The Other Voices International Project. Ashraf has been engaged in poetry blogging since 2002. His poetry blog, called arch.memory, has been featured on Blinq, the blog of the Philadelphia Inquirer; voted amongst the Best of the Web Blogs for poetry, and he was selected as one of 100 Blogging Poets on the web. In addition to his blog, Ashraf maintains a website of Philadelphia poetry links and calendars called PhillyPoetry.com.