Pegah  Ahmadi  was  born  in  Tehran  in  1974.    She  is  the  author  of  three  volumes  of  poetry,  On  the  Ending  G,  Cadence,  and  These  Days  of  Mine  Are  A  Throat,  an  interweaving  of  modern  Farsi  and  ancient  Persian,  in  which  she  explores  the  history  of  cruelty  against  women  in  Iran,  criticizing  the  Islamic  religion  and  its  influence  on  Iran’s  social-­‐political  situation,  published  in  2002.    That  same  year,  she  also  published    a  translation  of  poetry  by  Sylvia  Plath  entitled  Mad  Girl’s  Love  

Song,  and  collected,  edited,  introduced  and  published  an  anthology  gathering  the  work  of  Iranian  women  poets,  both  historical  and  contemporary.        Shortly  after,  she  was  banned  from  publishing  poetry  in  her  home  country,  except,  in  a  limited  manner,  through  online  venues  run  by  exiled  Iranian  writers.    In  2009,  following  her  involvement  in  the  Green  Movement’s  demonstrations  against  Iranian  President  Mahmoud  Ahmadinejad,  she  was  threatened  with  imprisonment,  and  left  Iran  with  the  assistance  of  the  International  Cities  of  Refuge  Network  (ICORN),  which  placed  her  as  a  guest  writer  in  the  city-­‐of-­‐refuge  site  in  Frankfurt,  Germany.    During  her  years  in  Frankfurt  her  long  unpublished  book,  I  Was  Not  Cold,  translated  into  German  by  Jutta  Himmelreich,  was  published  by  Sujet  Verlag  in  Berlin.    Ahmadi  is  in  residence  at  Brown  for  the  2011-­‐12  academic  year.    

Born  in  Tehran  in  1938,  Bahram  Beyzaie  is  a  well  known  Iranian  critic,  researcher,  teacher,  playwright,  stage  director  (and  producer),  screenwriter  and  filmmaker  (director,  producer  and  editor)  who  has  written  more  than  35  plays  and  more  than  50  screenplays,  including  feature  films  Downpour,  The  Stranger  and  The  Fog,  The  Crowd,  Death  of  Yazdgerd,  and  Bashu,  the  Little  Stranger.    His  work  has  been  widely  translated,  and  was  first  introduced  to  western  audiences  when  he  was  25,  through  a  production  of  his  work  at  the  Festival  du  Theater  des  Nations  in  Paris,  1963.      Professor  and  Chair  

of  the  Dramatic  Arts  Department  at  Tehran  University  until  the  Islamic  revolution,  he  is  at  present  a  visiting  professor  at  Stanford  University’s  Iranian  Studies  Program,  where  he  lectures  on  such  topics  as  Iranian  Cinema,  Iranian  Theater,  and  Cinema  and  Mythology.        

Joumana  Haddad  is  a  renowned  Lebanese  poet,  translator,  and  journalist.  She  is  head  of  the  Cultural  pages  for  the  prestigious  "An  Nahar"  newspaper,  as  well  as  the  editor-­‐in-­‐chief  of  Jasad  Magazine,  a  controversial  Arabic  magazine  specializing  in  the  literature  and  arts  of  the  body.  She  has  published  several  poetry  collections,  widely  acclaimed  by  critics,  including  original  books  in  Italian,  English,  French  and  Spanish,  in  addition  to  Arabic.  She  has  also  published  several  works  of  translation,  including  an  anthology  of  150  poets  who  committed  suicide  in  

the  20th  century.    Her  most  recent  publication,  an  essay  on  Arab  women  entitled  “I  

 

 

 

Killed  Scheherazade:  Confessions  of  an  Angry  Arab  Woman,”  (Lawrence  Hill  Books,  Chicago),  has  been  translated  to  13  languages.    The  sequel,  “Superman  is  an  Arab:      On  God,  Marriage,  Macho  Men  and  Other  Disastrous  Inventions,”  will  appear  in  September  2012.    

 

Masha  Hamilton  is  the  author  of  four  acclaimed  novels,  most  recently  31  Hours,  which  the  Washington  Post  called  one  of  the  best  novels  of  2009  and  independent  bookstores  named  an  Indie  choice.  She  also  founded  two  world  literacy  projects,  the  Camel  Book  Drive  and  the  Afghan  Women's  Writing  Project.  She  is  the  winner  of  the  2010  Women's  National  Book  Association  award,  presented  "to  a  living  American  woman  who  derives  part  or  all  of  her  income  from  books  and  allied  arts,  and  who  has  done  meritorious  work  in  the  world  of  books  beyond  

the  duties  or  responsibilities  of  her  profession  or  occupation."  She  began  her  career  as  a  full-­‐time  journalist,  working  in  Maine,  Indiana  and  New  York  City  before  being  sent  by  the  Associated  Press  to  the  Middle  East,  where  she  was  news  editor  for  five  years,  including  the  period  of  the  first  intefadeh,  and  then  moving  to  Moscow,  where  she  worked  for  five  years  during  the  collapse  of  Communism,  reporting  for  the  Los  Angeles  Times  and  NBC-­‐Mutual  Radio  and  writing  a  monthly  column,  "Postcards  from  Moscow."  She  also  reported  from  Kenya  in  2006,  and  from  Afghanistan  in  2004  and  2008.  

 

Sara  Khalili  is  an  editor  and  translator  of  contemporary  Iranian  literature.  Her  translations  include  Shahriar  Mandanipour’s  novel  Censoring  an  Iranian  Love  Story  and  Shahrnush  Parsipur’s  Prison  Memoir.    She  was  awarded  the  2007  PEN  Translation  Fund  Award  for  her  translation  of  Seasons  of  Purgatory,  a  collection  of  short  stories  by  Mandanipour.  Her  short  story  translations  have  appeared  in  The  Literary  Review,  The  Kenyon  Review,  The  Virginia  Quarterly  Review,  Words  Without  Borders,  PEN  America,  and  the  anthology  Bound  to  Last.  She  has  also  translated  several  

collections  of  poetry,  among  them  The  Sorrow  of  Solitude,  Poems  of  Forough  Farrokhzad;  My  Country,  I  Shall  Build  You  Again,  Poems  of  Simin  Behbahani;  As  Red  as  Fire  Tasting  of  Smoke,  Selected  Poems  of  Siavash  Kasraii.  Sara  was  also  a  contributing  translator  to  Strange  Times  My  Dear:  A  PEN  Anthology  of  Contemporary  Iranian  Literature.              

 

 

 

Ron  Leshem  is  an  author  and  scriptwriter  whose  novel,  Beaufort,  was  the  recipient  of  the  2006  Sapir  Prize,  Israel’s  top  literary  award.      Widely  translated,  Beaufort  was  released  in  English  by  Random  House  in  2008.      The  film  version  of  the  novel,  which  Leshem  coauthored,  was  nominated  for  Academy  Award  for  Best  Foreign  Language  Film,  and  won  the  Berlin  International  Film  Festival  Silver  Bear  for  Best  Director.  Beaufort  has  been  hailed  –  not  only  by  critics  

but  by  the  generation  of  soldiers  who  served  in  Lebanon  during  Israeli  occupation  –  as  the  true  voice  of  that  period.    Leshem  has  served  as  journalist  and  senior  editor  for  Israeli  dailies  Yedioth  Ahronoth  and  Ma'ariv.  In  2006  he  became  deputy  director  for  content  and  programming  for    Channel  2,  Israel's  main  commercial  TV  network.  

 

Abbas Milani is the Hamid & Christina Moghadam Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and a Professor (by courtesy) in Division of International, Comparative and Area Studies. He has been one of the founding co-directors of the Iran Democracy Project and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His expertise is U.S.-Iran relations as well as Iranian cultural, political, and security issues. Till 1986, he taught at Tehran University's Faculty of Law and Political Science where he was also a member of the Board of Directors of the university's Center for

International Relations. After moving to the United States, he was for fourteen years the Chair of the Political Science Department at the Notre Dame de Namur University. For eight years, he was a visiting Research Fellow in University of California, Berkeley's Middle East Center.

Professor Milani came to Stanford ten years ago where he has been the founding director of the Iranian Studies Program. He also worked with two colleagues to launch the Iran Demcoracy Project at the Hoover Institution. He has published more than twenty books and two hundred articles and book reviews in scholarly magazines, journals, and newspapers. Amongst his books, are Modernity and Its Foes in Iran (in Persian, Gardon Press, 1998); The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution ( in both Persian and English, Mage, 2000; Akhtaran, 2001); Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran (Mage 2004); King of Shadows ( in Persian, Ketob Corp. 2004); The Myth of the Great Satan (Hoover Institution Press, 2010); Eminent Persians, two volumes (Syracuse University Press). His latest book is The Shah (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). Milani has also translated numerous books and articles into Persian and English. His articles have been published in journals, magazines, and newspapers including The Washington Quarterly, the Encyclopedia Iranica, the Hoover Digest, Iranshenasi, the Journal of the Middle East, Middle East Journal, the New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement. His work has been translated into Persian, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Pashtun and Arabic. He has won numerous grants, teaching awards and Fellowships and has on numerous occasions appeared on major news and opinion programs here in America and around the world.

 

 

 

 

 

Sheida  Mohamadi,  poet  and  fiction  writer,  was  born  in  Tehran,  Iran.    She  is  the  author  of  three  books,  a  work  of  lyrical  prose,  Mahtab  Delash  ra  Goshud,  Banu!  (The  Moonlight  Opened  its  Heart,  Lady!);  a  novel,  Afsaneh-­ye  Baba  Leila  (The  Legend  of  Baba  Leila);  and  a  collection  of  poems,  Aks-­e  Fowri-­ye  Eshqbazi  (The  Snapshot  of  Lovemaking).    A  new  collection  of  her  poems,  Yavashhaye  Ghermez  (Crimson  Whispers)  is  currently  in  press.    She  was  Poet  in  Residence  at  University  of  Maryland  in  2010.  Her  

poems  have  been  translated  into  different  languages,  including  English,  French,  Turkish,  Kurdish  and  Swedish.  

 

 Shahriar  Mandanipour  is  the  author  of  nine  volumes  of  fiction,  one  nonfiction  book,  and  more  than  100  essays  in  genre  such  as  literary  theory,  literature  and  art  criticism,  creative  writing,  censorship,  and  social  commentary.  His  collections  of  short  stories  include  The  Eighth  Day  of  the  Earth,  Violet  Orient,  Midday  Moon,Mummy  and  Honey,  Shadows  of  the  Cave,  and  Ultramarine  Blue.  He  is  the  author  of  the  two-­‐volume  novel,  The  Courage  of  Love.  From  

1999  until  2007,  he  was  Editor-­‐in-­‐Chief  of  Asr-­e  Panjshanbeh  (Thursday  Evening),  a  monthly  literary  journal  published  in  Shiraz  that  after  nine  years  of  publishing  was  banned  by  Iran’s  Ministry  of  Culture  and  Islamic  Guidance.      His  first  novel  to  appear  in  English,  Censoring  an  Iranian  Love  Story,  translated  by  Sara  Khalili  and  published  by  Knopf  in  2009,  was  well  received.  The  New  Yorker  named  it  as  one  of  the  reviewers’  favorites  of  2009,  and  NPR  named  it  one  of  the  best  debut  novels  of  the  year.    Censoring  An  Iranian  Love  Story  is  also  being  translated  and  published  in  11  other  languages  in  countries  throughout  the  world.      Mandanipour’s  honors  include  the  Mehregan  Award  for  the  best  Iranian  children’s  novel  of  2004,  the  1998  Golden  Tablet  Award  for  best  fiction  in  Iran  during  the  previous  two  decades,  and  Best  Film  Critique  at  the  1994  Press  Festival  in  Tehran.                

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daniyal  Mueenuddin  was  brought  up  in  Lahore,  Pakistan  and  Elroy,  Wisconsin.  For  his  book  In  Other  Rooms,  Other  Wonders,  he  was  the  2010  winner  of  The  Story  Prize,  an  annual  book  award  for  short  story  collections—as  well  as  a  finalist  for  the  Pulitzer  Prize,  National  Book  Award,  and  the  LA  Times  Book  Prize.  His  National  Book  Award  Citation  read  "One  of  the  best  new  story  writers  in  America  lives  on  a  farm  in  Pakistan.  A  large  cast  of  characters  passes  through  his  pages,  giving  us  a  wonderful  sense  of  the  strata  of  contemporary  Pakistan,  and,  miraculously,  a  sharp  sense  of  our  own  lives."  

The  Daily  Beast  wrote,  "In  Other  Rooms,  Other  Wonders  reveals  a  modern  Pakistan  that  is  as  beautiful  as  it  is  brutal…[His]  work  evokes  19th-­‐century  Russian  masters  like  Turgenev  and  Gogol,  along  with  the  Southern  Gothic  tradition  of  Faulkner  and  Truman  Capote…Mueenuddin  is  a  prodigiously  talented  writer,  capable  of  imagining  the  inner  lives  of  Punjabi  aristocrats  and  their  servants  with  equal  sympathy,  precision  and  power.”  

Mohsen  Namjoo,  an  Iranian  artist,  songwriter,  singer,  music  scholar  and  setar  (traditional  Persian  lute)  player,  has  been  described  in  The  New  York  Times  as  the  “Bob  Dylan  of  Iran.”      Among  his  albums  are  Toranj  (released  in  Iran  in  2007),  Oy,  Useless  Kisses,  and  Alaki.    He  has  composed  soundtracks  for  movies  and  plays,  and  was  featured  in  the  documentary  Sounds  of  Silence,  directed  by  Amir  Hamz  and  Mark  Lazarz.    In  2006,  he  was  sentenced  in  absentia  to  a  five-­‐year  jail  term  by  the  Iranian  revolutionary  courts  for  allegedly  ridiculing  the  ash-­‐Shams,  a  sura  of    the  Qur’an,  in  his  song  “Shams.”    His  first  performance  outside  Iran  took  place  in  2006  at  the  International  Rotterdam  Film  Festival;  in  2008,  he  kicked  off  his  first  U.S.  solo  tour.    His  unique  musical  style  

resembles  a  patchwork  of  the  classical  Persian  poetry  of  Hafez,  Rumi,  or  Saadi  with  western  rock,  blues,  and  jazz.  

Iranian  novelist  Shahrnush  Parsipur,  born  in  Tehran,  Iran,  in  1946,  is  no  stranger  to  political  opposition.    A  woman  who  writes  about  hot-­‐button  issues  like  lousy  marriages  and  female  virginity,  Parsipur  has  seen  all  of  her  books  –  eight  works  of  fiction  and  a  memoir  –  banned  in  her  native  land.    She’s  been  imprisoned  for  her  writings  four  times,  once  for  nearly  five  years,  from  1981  to  1986.    Parsipur’s  writing  career  began  in  1974  with  the  publication  of  her  first  novel,  The  Dog  and  The  Long  Winter,  in  which  a  tradition-­‐bound  young  woman  encounters  the  revolutionary  activism  of  her  brother  and  his  

friends.    Parsipur’s  later  works,  like  Touba  and  the  Meaning  of  Night  and  Women  Without  Men  (a  title  alluding  to  Ernest  Hemingway’s  Men  Without  Women),  openly  explore  the  condition  of  women  in  Iran.    Parsipur’s  characters  speak  unabashedly  of  women’s  sexual  oppression,  ridicule  chastity,  and  express  their  resistance  to  Iran’s  

 

 

 

male-­‐dominated  culture.    Indeed,  Women  Without  Men  was  considered  provocative  enough  in  Iran  that  it  landed  Parsipur  in  prison  twice,  in  1990  and  1991.    Now  a  political  refugee,  Parsipur  has  lived  in  the  U.S.  since  1994  when  she  received  a  Lillian  Hellman/Dashiell  Hammett  Award  from  the  Fund  for  Free  Expression.    She  is  a  former  Brown  International  Writers  Project  Fellow  (2004).    The  award-­‐winning  film  based  on  her  novel,  Women  Without  Men,  directed  by  Shirin  Neshat,  was  released  in  2010.    Her  new  book,  Prison  Memoir,  is  forthcoming  from  The  Feminist  Press.  

Egyptian  writer  and  journalist  Sondos  Shabayek  wrote,  performed  in  and  co-­‐directed  The  Bussy  Project,  a  reworking  of  the  play  The  Vagina  Monologues,  in  which  men  and  women  talk  about  sexual  oppression,  privacy,  freedom,  and  harassment    in  the  Middle  East.    She  is  also  the  director  of  Tahrir  Monologues,  stories  about  the  2011  Egyptian  uprising.