AIAW Featured Writers Overview

A summary of our featured Iranian American Writers, in the genres of fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Jasmin Darznik: The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life
Like all the photographs that came with us when we left Iran, this one was as supple and as thick as leather. Its edges were tattered and a long white crease coursed through the image. I might easily have mistaken it for just another old photograph, but this one was nothing like the others...Read more

Sholeh Wolpé: Five Poems from 'Rooftops of Tehran'
I look at him and even in this panic, this feeling
of imminent death, I note how beautiful he is,
how I could perhaps outlive this storm
in this man's brawny arms, let myself go
and the hell with the world...Read more




Zohreh (Zoe) Gharehmani: Sky Of Red Poppies
Shireen swallowed hard and for the next minute seemed puzzled. "The tiny fish is stuck in a shallow stream", she went on, now with less confidence, "but in fact he seeks the freedom of a vast ocean. He has everything he needs to reach his goal: Hope, vision, and courage"...Read more




Shideh Etaat: Four Poems on Loss, Political Corruption, Love and Longing
...Eighteen facing seats shining empty.
School is cancelled because men have
been hired to beat those wearing green,
to go inside dorm rooms smash computer screens
break beds turn trash bins upside down.
Where does one hide rebellion?

It was imperative to have the leader's vision, and it was
announced then that his vision is this, that he elects Ahmadinejad....

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Dena Afrasiabi: String
Dad and I move for the third time in five years. Our new town in the Sierras has a population of 8,000. They hanged criminals here during the Gold Rush, the town's claim to fame. We arrive a week after I turn fifteen. Dad says we'll have a new adventure in Gold Country. No more Los Angeles smog. No red-faced drivers yelling through rolled-up windows. No emaciated drug addicts passed out in alleys behind our building in East Hollywood. No gunshots waking us in the night...

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Zohreh Ghahremani: Sky of Red Poppies
Sky of Red Poppies walks the reader through stretches of breathtaking and thought-provoking narrative to provide answers to Iran's brilliant past and brutal present. Well worth considering!
Dr. Ahmad Karimi Hakkak, Professor of Persian Literature and Culture, University of MarylandRead more




Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet: MARTYRDOM STREET
...I shook my head. Then she whispered, “I don’t believe in martyrdom.” Before I could answer, an altercation broke out between two customers standing ahead of us in line. "It's my turn," a bearded middle-aged man yelled as he elbowed a veiled woman half his size to claim a spot in front of the post-office clerk. "What do you mean?" the chadori woman challenged. "I've been waiting for twenty minutes." ...Read more




Roger Sedarat: Four Poems
My Father returned from Iran with everything but his bones.
He said customs claimed them as government property.
We laid him on a Persian carpet in front of the television.
When I’d hold his wrist to his face
because he wanted to know the time,
we could see the holes made from swords in his elbow.
His arm reminded me of kabob koobideigh. ...Read more




Marjan Kamali: Mina v. Saddam, 1982
Saddam dropped the first bomb. In the middle of the night when Mina was fast asleep, dreaming of fat juicy pomegranates. Bam. The house shook and down they all went to the basement to lie on the floor. He had very good eyes, she knew that much. The fighters in his planes could see mice at midnight under no moon...
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Zara Houshmand: Five poems
Identifying Photos of Basijis
When the eyes of the living hold no more light than the dead
and ignorance makes sport of human dignity,

when the marksman lifts his weapon’s scope to hollow eye
and surrenders his soul to smoke and mirrors...Read more

Angella Nazarian: To Be Home
From her new book Life as a Visitor by Assouline Publishers - 2009
It must have been the highlight of their day, maybe even their entire month: Here was a gorgeous, blue-eyed American blonde stumbling into a Middle Eastern souvenir shop right by the border of Jordan and Israel, belly dancing in front of two middle-aged Arab shopkeepers...Read more




Farnoosh Moshiri: Excerpts from Chapter 7 of her first novel, At the Wall of the Almighty (1999, Interlink Publishing Group)
Sixteen hooded guards invade the cell, two for each of us. They handcuff and push us out. The cold muzzles of their guns touch our temples. They drag Shams like an empty sack behind them. They hit the dervish in the mouth. He keeps murmuring...
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Shirindokht Nourmanesh: In Search of the Past I find Myself
Inside a San Jose movie theater at the beginning of “Twister,” my body starts trembling. I feel nauseous and frightened. As the Dolby sound system echoes the blast of a tornado careening towards Helen Hunt’s character, the noise is so real and so familiar that it feels like an air raid...Read more




Taha Ebrahimi: From Among The Sufis
An excerpt from a chapter titled “Modern Love”
Asik arrived early in the morning with a suitcase at the London Sufi house, the khanikha. She had nowhere else to go. She had traveled overnight from Geneva. Everybody could hear her crying upstairs in Amir’s office. He shut the great wooden double-doors and Pari stood at the bottom of the stairs pretending to dust the banister...Read more




Farnaz Fatem: Four poems
Nocturnal Variations
I.
By myself sleeping
after you are gone
I sometimes forget you are rather near--
measuring scoops of coffee
or letting the steam into your milk.
The kitchen you are in, the day you are already beginning,
still unfamiliar to me when I wake...Read more




Esther Kamkar: A selection of poems
When Being Full is Not Enough
                                        Title from my daughter's dream
...I water the young
roses with rusty leaves —
the bird-feeders are empty,
and the gray bird has lost its tail.

The Mesopotamian Crows
of Ba' qubah caw-caw me their story:
    No one eats the river carp anymore,
    the fish feed on rotting corpses...Read more

Tissa Hami: Initiation
...It was the question I would get asked countless times for years to come – one that I've since learned to answer with a smart-ass quip. That's what happens to you if you get asked the same nosy question too many times – you end up making fun of the question, or worse, on your mean days, you resort to making fun of the questioner. But at the time, it was a novel question to me, so I answered it forthrightly. "It's Persian," I said.

Miss Franklin looked at me blankly. "Oh," she said slowly, arching her pencil-thin eyebrows and tilting her head to the side. I realized she had no idea what that meant. She hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether to ask her next question, but then she went for it. "And where are you from?" she asked, the smile on her face too ambivalent...Read more




Salar Abdoh: My Generation
'Becoming Uncomfortable: An Edited Version of a Speech Given at Brown University in 2004, about the late Reza Abdoh, the author’s brother, and his theater company Dar-A-Luz'
Essay in honor of Reza Abdoh - by Salar Abdoh
At a memorial for Reza I once likened him to a shooting star that burned fast and furiously and died too young. In retrospect, I think it was the whole theater company that merits that astral comparison. For Dar-a-Luz, it seems to me now more than ever, truly was something of a force of nature...Read more




Parissa Ebrahimzadeh: Now
...Jallal had always been an active boy, a busy child – and I am recalling the days well before the bombs falling and the nights where we slept on the basement floor, beds comprised of folded blankets, our backpacks strapped to our backs, ready to jump up, evacuate – leave everything behind. I am talking about the times earlier than that. When he was fidgety, not out of fear, but because every limb was curious to move around, touch something, push an object from its resting place, see what would happen when he caused change. That anxious energy...Read more