AIAW Member Profiles -- (M)

Mojdeh Marashi is a writer, translator, artist and designer whose work is deeply influenced by the ancient and modern history of Iran. Her stories merge the world of magical realism in Persian literature that she grew up reading, the reality of the world she lives in today, and the utopia she dreams about.

She was born in Tehran, Iran and moved to U.S. in 1977. She is the translator (from Persian, with Chad Sweeney) of The Selected Poems of H. E. Sayeh: The Art of Stepping Through Time (White Pine, 2011). Her fiction was published in the anthology Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: Women of the Iranian Diaspora (University of Arkansas, 2006).

She holds an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts as well an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She lives in Palo Alto, California.

Aidin Massoudi is a 27 year old Iranian born American poet. For the unabridged version of his biography, you will have to outlive him.

Mehrnoosh Mazarei was born and raised in Iran. In 1979 she moved to Southern California to continue her higher education.

She has published four short story collections in Persian. Borideh hay e nour (Streaks of Light) in 1992, Clara va man (Clara and I) in 1998, Khakestary (Gray) in 2002, and Madam X in 2008.

Between 1989 and 1991, she co-founded and co-edited Forough, a Persian literary magazine dedicated to women's literature.

A collection of her selected short stories was published in Iran in 2004 and was nominated two times for the best first short story book of the year. One story in this book was anthologized as one of the ten best short stories published in that year.

Two collections of her short stories (in English), and a novel written based on her memoir, are ready for publication.

Mazarei's stories have been published in Iranian, American, English and Canadian magazines, literary web sites and anthologies, including Eighty years Iranian Short Story / 1981-2001 Vol. 4.

Her English works had appeared in The Literary Review, West Cost Line (in Canada), Another Sea, another Shore (New York), and in The Lounge Companion Vol. 2 (Oxford, England).

One of her stories, Of Mice and Women, was also translated and anthologized in Germany.

Two of her pieces, Two Men and From Boshehr to the Caspian Sea are scheduled to be published in Narrative Magazine as a Story of The Week and Reader' Narrative, respectively.

Mazarei lives in Valley Center, California with her husband, writer Khosrow Davami.

Melody Moezzi is a writer, speaker, attorney and activist. She is the author of the award-winning book, War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims. She is also a commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered and a blogger for the Huffington Post. She has appeared on CNN, BBC, Air America, as well as many other programs. For more information or to arrange a speaking engagement, please visit Moezzi’s website:

www.melodymoezzi.com

Born and educated in Iran, Javad Mohsenian M.D. is a psychiatrist, poet and writer in suburban Philadelphia. He started his writing career in high school. Inspired by the farmers' living conditions, he wrote Waves in the Wheat fields (Mooje Keshtzasra), but no publisher was interested in a teenager's work.

Preparing for the tough university exams, he studied every previous one he could put his hands on. He passed Shiraz Medical School exam and wrote a best seller Rahnemaye Kankoor, a guide to college entrance exams. It was published by Elmi, a major publishing company in Tehran. His price for the exam collection was the publication of his earlier novel. His second novel, Today is also Late (Emrooz Ham Deer Ast), depicting the struggle of youth against the old traditions was accepted on a professional basis. Persian Moonlight, his first novel in English was a repetition of the old struggle until the doctor writer came in contact with a doctor publisher, the owner of Moore Publishing Company. He published 9/11 Children last year and is currently working on a novel in relation to events in Iran.

Dr. Mohsenian has lectured and written many articles on his favorite subjects, Attention Deficit learning disabilities, immigrants adjustments in the US and Persian poetry.

Farnoosh Moshiri is the author of three novels and a collection of short stories. She went into exile in 1983 after a massive arrest and persecution of Iranian intellectuals by the Islamic fundamentalist regime. She teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Houston campuses.


www.farnooshmoshiri.net

Sasha Mostofi was born and raised in Tehran, Iran and was the first in her family to immigrate to the United States in the 1990s at the age of sixteen. She is the author of Cemetery of Dreams, a political thriller/espionage novel set in the wake of the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis.
Her blog www.smostofi.com focuses on inspirational stories about Iranians who are having a positive impact on their country. She also offers reviews for books about Iran.


www.smostofi.com

Beatrice Motamedi is a journalist, teacher and writer. Her work has been published in a wide range of publications, including CNN.com, Pacific News Service, AlterNet, Salon.com, the International Herald Tribune, and Newsweek, Wired and Health magazines. She has worked as a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, a regional financial correspondent for United Press International and a national feature writer for WebMD.

Her essays appear in two anthologies, Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been — New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora (University of Arkansas Press: 2006), and Something That Matters (Harwood Press: 2008).

Born in Paris, she received her B.A. in English from Northwestern University and her M.A. from the Creative Writing Program in poetry at Stanford.

The recipient of a 2001 Kaiser/National Press Foundation Fellowship in Health, she holds a California teaching credential, and has worked extensively with disadvantaged students in public schools, helping them write about race, poverty, violence and cultural identity. Her students’ work has been republished in The Oakland Tribune and has received national recognition from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. She currently teaches journalism at The Urban School in San Francisco.

Born in Austria to Iranian parents, Roya Movafegh moved to her native country as a little girl only to escape it five years later due to the heavy persecutions her family faced as Baha’is.

By the age of twelve, she had lived in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. She quickly learned what it meant to fall short of the criteria of societies and nations – her coloring was too dark, her religion worthy of torture and death, her nationality best kept a secret, and her new language considered a threat.

Thirty years later, her journeys have finally culminated into The People With No Camel, where she not only gives voice to the plight of the Baha’i Community in Iran, but speaks to our concepts of Freedom in the West.

She is a multi-media artist whose work explores the dynamics of assimilation as well as the multiple facets of cultural identity. She has founded various youth arts organizations, including The Young Harlem Photographers, Nobility Within, and is the co-founder with Mehr Mansuri of The Children’s Theatre Company of New York.

Her photo publication, Wishes in Black and White, a book about race relations in America, was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Website: www.royamovafegh.com