AIAW Member Profiles - Pages: 1..2..3..4..
Tala Khanmalek
Tala Khanmalek is currently a graduating senior at UC Berkeley. She is a Center for Race and Gender Undergraduate Grant Recipient and has presented
her work at the 3rd Annual Muslim Studies Conference in Michigan State
University. Although research interests explore the Orientalist legacies
of particular philosophers and forms of counter-narration today,
especially within the Iranian diaspora, she also writes fictional vignettes
and short accounts of experiences with her family.
Anita Amirrezvani
Anita Amirrezvani is the author of The Blood of Flowers, published by Little, Brown & Co. in 2007. The novel, which was called “enduring and dynamic” by the Washington Post and “hypnotic” by the San Francisco Chronicle, has been sold to publishers in more than thirty countries. It was longlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize in the UK and shortlisted for the 2008 Boeke Prize in South Africa. Anita has been a speaker at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Adelaide Writers’ Week, Book Expo America, the Asia Society, LitQuake, and many bookstores and libraries. Prior to the release of her book, she was a staff writer and dance critic for ten years at the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times. Anita received her B.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley and is currently working on her second novel.
www.bloodofflowers.com
Roger Sedarat
Roger Sedarat is a poet and translator. His first collection of poetry, Dear Regime: Letters to the Islamic Republic (Ohio UP), won the 2007 Hollis Summers Prize. In addition to publishing articles on American poetry, Middle Eastern-American literature, and writing pedagogy, he has placed poems and translations in such journals as The New England Review, Atlanta Review, and Iranian.com. A recipient of scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and a St. Botolph Society Grant, he is Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Queens College, City University of New York.
After receiving his BA at the University of Texas-Austin and an MA in English/Creative Writing at Queens College, he completed a PhD in English at Tufts University. Much of his creative writing as an Iranian-American poet involves the connection of his Middle-Eastern background to the American literary tradition, adapting Persian themes and forms into English. His creative interests include using humor, post-modern performance, politics, and popular culture to transgress social norms and violate aesthetic expectations. He is currently working on a second collection of poetry based on the modern history of Iran, a full-length translation of twentieth century Iranian poetry, and a children’s book about nefarious dinosaurs.
Homa Pourasgari
Homa Pourasgari grew up in Tehran, Iran and moved to Southern California to finish her secondary education. She wrote her first short story in high school and after graduating with a business degree from Loyola Marymount University, she left to study literature at the University of Sorbonne in Paris.
Later, she participated at UCLA’s writer’s program where she wrote several short stories, and was the assistant editor for UCLA’s West Word 7. Homa has worked in industries such as banking, retail, accounting and fitness. About five years
ago, she injured her back and was sick for a whole year. Bored, she decided to start writing her first novel, Lemon Curd, which was published in July, 2006 and was nominated ForeWard Magazine’s book of the year award finalist. Her
second book is coming out in 2009.
www.homapourasgari.com
Her book website is www.lemoncurd.us
Jahanshah Javid
Jahanshah Javid was born in Abadan, Iran, in 1962. He attended high school in the U.S. and Germany from 1976 to 1980, and returned to Iran after graduation. His journalism career began in 1981 as a translator for the Islamic Republic New Agency (IRNA). In the following decade he became the agency's correspondent in London and the United Nations in New York as well as editor of the English section in Tehran. Javid left Iran in 1990 and permanently settled in the U.S. After receiving a BA in Media Studies from New York's Hunter College in 1995, he launched iranian.com. Javid continued his journalism career as a presenter for Aftab Iranian cable TV network in New York (1994-96) and a correspondent for the BBC Persian Service in Washington DC (1998-2000). Since then he has dedicated himself to running iranian.com full time. Today the site is the largest and most-viewed English-language Iranian online forum for amateur and professional writers and artists.
Meghan Nuttall Sayres
Meghan Nuttall Sayres is a tapestry weaver who lives with her husband, children, sheep and cat in Eastern Washington. She is author of a novel set in 19th century Iran, Anahita's Woven Riddle, an ALA Top Ten Best Books 2007 and a Book Sense Pick 2007; Weaving Tapestry in Rural Ireland; and co-author of Daughters of the Desert: Tales of Remarkable Women From the Christian, Jewish and Muslim Traditions.
Meghan has visited schools and taught creative writing workshops in schools in the US, Ireland, Turkey, Qatar, Iran and Uzbekistan, where she has also met with scholars, carpet weavers, dye masters and merchants to study the age-old symbolism and Sufi poetry that infuse many rugs woven throughout the Middle East. She is at work on novels set in these countries and an anthology about Iran. For updated information about her other books and blogs visit her at: www.MeghanNuttallSayres.com, and StoryForce.net, or MySpace.
Aphrodite Désirée Navab
Aphrodite Désirée Navab is an Iranian-Greek-American artist and writer (b. 1971, Iran), who uses visual art and writing to investigate diasporic issues in art, education, and cultural studies. In 2004 she completed an Ed.D. in Art and Art Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She received her BA magna cum laude in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University in 1993.
Navab’s art has been featured in over seventy exhibitions around the world and is included in a number of permanent collections. Navab has published several interdisciplinary scholarly journal articles dealing with issues in contemporary art. Her poetry, 'Tales Left Untold' is published in an anthology entitled: Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora (2006), edited by Persis Karim, Parisa Milani, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press. Navab’s personal essay, 'What is Home After Exile? An Iranian Greek American Homecoming' is published in Homelands; Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place and Time (2007), edited by Jenesha de Rivera, Patricia Justine Tumang, Seal Press. Her short story will be published in the forthcoming anthology edited by Ishmael Reed and Carla Blank, Powow: American Short Fiction from Then to Now (2008), Da Capo Press: Perseus Books.
Farnoosh Seifoddini
Farnoosh Seifoddini received an MFA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. Post graduation, she managed to find a real “real job” despite her numerous liberal arts degrees. She keeps a day job in content development for children’s books and software. She keeps a night job writing poetry and working on her manuscript. Farnoosh’s poetry can be found in various print and online journals. Currently resides in San Francisco and loves it!
Some Online Publications:
Sunset in Ipanema - Temenos
Dokhtar-e Amrika-i - The Iranian
Muffled Prayers - Kennesaw Review
Spring Cleaning - Kennesaw Review
Some Print Publications:
Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora - May 2006
Pre-Maternity - North American Review - March/April 2004
Elements 1 & 4 - Transfer Magazine - Spring 2004
Various poems, My America - Summer 2003
Spring Cleaning - Scribbler - January 2003
Sholeh Wolpé
Sholeh is the author of Sin—Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (University of Arkansas Press), Rooftops of Tehran (Red Hen Press), The Scar Saloon (Red Hen Press), Shame (a play in three acts) and a poetry/music CD (Refuge Studios). She is the associate editor of The Norton Anthology of Modern Literature from the Muslim World (Norton, 2010) and the guest editor of Atlanta Review (2010 Iran issue). Her poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in scores of literary journals, periodicals and anthologies worldwide, and have been translated into several languages.
Sholeh was born in Iran but spent most of her teen years in the Caribbean and Europe, ending up in the U.S. where she pursued Masters degrees in Radio-TV-Film (Northwestern University) and Public Health (Johns Hopkins University). She lives in Los Angeles.
About her work, Sholeh writes: “Literature has brought me a fluid freedom that knows no walls. I have slowly learned that there is a sweet liberty in being a foreigner everywhere, not belonging anywhere.”
Mailing Address: 645 W 9th St., # 110-110, Los Angeles, Ca 90015
www.sholehwolpe.com
Taha Ebrahimi
Taha Ebrahimi's award-winning writing has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, The Seattle Times, RIVET Magazine, Elan Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, "Keep It Real: Everything You Need to Know About Researching and Writing Creative Nonfiction" (Norton, 2008) and is forthcoming in "Love and Pomegranates: New Voices Celebrating Iran." She has been in residence at both Hedgebrook and the Millay Colony for the Arts, where she was also on the jury in 2008. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Pittsburgh where she also taught writing for three years. Originally from Seattle, Washington, she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Ari Barkeshli Siletz
Born and raised in Tehran, Ari Barkeshli Siletz emigrated to the United States in 1971 at the age of 17. His book The Mullah With No Legs And Other Stories portrays Iranians as a complex and resilient people who take their historical triumphs and tragedies in humorous stride. During his childhood, Siletz traveled extensively through Iran’s towns and villages in the company of his Hamedani father and Azerbaijani mother. The author’s works draw heavily from his intimate contact with Iranians of all provinces, ethnicities and classes.
In the United States, Siletz took an old VW bus across the North American continent to get acquainted with his new homeland. The adopted name, “Siletz,” means “crooked” in the Native American language of the Siletz people, a reference to the twists and turns of the Siletz river near the Oregon coast. During his travels crisscrossing the country, Siletz took jobs as tree planter, taxi driver, farm hand, musician, appliance repairman, math tutor, social worker, and actor. The VW bus broke down irreparably in Sonoma County California, choosing the time and place for Siletz to settle and raise a family. The author, who is trained as a physicist, now runs a small company specializing in vision systems for industrial robots.
Siletz’s blog contains book reviews, film reviews, art reviews, political commentary, and interviews on Iran related issues. The author’s current literary preoccupation is human rights in the context of Islam and the West.
www.arisiletz.com
Amy Tahani-Bidmeshki
Amy Tahani-Bidmeshki is a doctoral student in the Department of Comparative Literature at UCLA. Her research centers on resistance literature and forms of literary and visual representation with a primary focus on post-WWII African-American and Iranian literatures and cultures. Her interests range over such issues as Marxism and aesthetics, canonization, minority cultures, exile and displacement, psychoanalysis, and the cultural politics of diaspora. Amy’s work has appeared in MELUS, the Los Angeles-based Persian weekly, Tehran Magazine, and the Persian monthly, Sarnevesht, among other publications.
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