Sheema Kalbasi

Sheema Kalbasi, born in November 1972 in Tehran, Iran, is a human rights activist, an award winning poet, and a literary translator to and from Persian, English, Danish, Swedish, and Urdu. She is the director of Dialogue of Nations through Poetry in Translation, the director of Iranian Women Poetry Project, and the co-director of the Other Voices International Project She has published two collections of poems, Echoes in Exile in English, and Sangsar (stoning) in Persian, and translated a bilingual anthology of women poets from Middle Ages Persia to present day Iran entitled Seven Valleys of Love. Her poetry has been translated into eighteen languages to date. She has co-authored more than 50 poems with American, Italian, Egyptian, Iranian, Indian, and French poets in English. Kalbasi's work is distinguished by her passionate defense of ethnic and religious minorities' rights. She has done voluntary teaching and tutoring of Baha’i refugee children as well as Iraqi Kurdish children, and disadvantaged Pakistani children in Pakistan. In 1990 she received her first humanitarian award in Islamabad, Pakistan. While studying nursing she did volunteer work at several nursing homes in and around Copenhagen. In addition Kalbasi has worked for the United Nations and the Center for non-Afghan Refugees in Pakistan and in Denmark. Her latest project, Memories of War, is to bring attention to the effects of war on individuals who have experienced or expressed it through their art, and writings. Kalbasi lives with her husband and children in the D.C. area.

www.reelcontent.org

Marjan Kamali

Marjan Kamali grew up in Turkey, Iran, Germany, Kenya and New York City. She has spent her adult life living in the U.S., Switzerland, and Australia. She received her BA in English Literature from U.C. Berkeley, her MBA from Columbia University and her MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. She is the recipient of a national Scholastic Writing Award. Her short story “The Gift” appeared in the anthology: Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been – New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora (2006), and was subsequently selected to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4’s Uncovering Iran Series. Marjan is currently working on revisions of her first novel and on a children’s book. Her work draws from her experience as an expatriate and resident in 7 countries and focuses on themes of cultural displacement, the strength of family bonds and duties, and the enrichment and estrangement inherent in uprooted lives.

Esther Kamkar

"My poetry bridges the gulf from the far distant home country to the new ground of the United States. I bring my personal journey to life on the poetic page; I make the unifying connection between the experience of all immigrant journeys and the commonality of feeling lost, and then found. The themes and concepts of fitting in, isolation, strangeness, love that binds, and self-definition, speak to the heart of the readers of my work.

My poems demonstrate a large sense of the world. They look outward, directly at injustices and sorrows, and also inward, at my private world and the world of my heart. They tell the stories that lie deep within us.

My voice, the rarely heard voice of an Iranian woman, and an American mother living in the Bay Area, is informed by my childhood memories, dreams, and my poetic imagination in a new language, here and now. I have come from halfway around the globe; I have crossed borders and I do have something to declare. I bring with me a traditional loyalty to community, and a rich heritage of poetry. As a poet, I am constantly aware of the power of this artistic endeavor, its rewards and joys, and the gentle and elegant way it influences and enriches us all."

Most recently, Esther was this year’s (2008) co-winner for the Richard Maxwell Fellowship in Poetry.

www.estherkamkar.com

Persis Karim

Persis M. Karim is a California poet and nonfiction writer. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals including Caesura, HeartLodge, and Reed as well as online journals such as shortpoem.org. She is contributing poet and editor of Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora (University of Arkansas, 2006) and contributor and co-editor of A World Between: Poems, Short Stories, and Essays by Iranian-Americans (George Braziller, 1999).

She has written articles on the emergence of Iranian American literature and identity and has co-edited a special issue of MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States) on Iranian American Literature (2008).

Her manuscript of poetry, Ways to Count the Dead, is currently being revised for publication. She teaches literature and creative writing at San Jose State University and is founder and co-director of AIAW.

www.persiskarim.com

Fred Kashani

Fred Kashani is an Iranian-American novelist who was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He began writing in his thirties in order to cope with his alleged mystical experiences. He hopes his writing will help him develop a sense of humor and modesty. He’s the author of the novel, “Poetry Lessons” and he is currently at work on his second novel, “Hero Pizza.”

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet

Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet teaches Middle Eastern history and directs the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Kashani-Sabet received her B.A. with distinction from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead Scholar. She completed her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in history at Yale University. Her book, Frontier Fictions: Shaping the Iranian Nation, 1804-1946 (Princeton University Press, 1999) looks at the significance of land and border disputes in Iranian nationalism, with attention to Iran’s shared boundaries with the Ottoman Empire (and later Iraq and Turkey), Russia, Afghanistan, and the Gulf states. Frontier Fictions is currently being translated into Persian by Kitabsara Press, Iran.

Professor Kashani-Sabet has finished a book entitled, Conceiving Citizens: Women, Sexuality, and Religion in Modern Iran (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2010) She is also completing a book on America 's historical relationship with Iran and the Islamic world entitled, The Making of the 'Great Satan': A History of US - Iranian Relations (under contract with Princeton University Press).

In addition to pursuing her academic work, Professor Kashani-Sabet spends time writing fiction. Her first novel, Martyrdom Street, will be published by Syracuse University Press in 2010. She has started a second novel and hopes to complete a series of children’s books in the future.

Born and raised in Tehran, Iran, Dr. Kashani-Sabet has traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East and speaks several languages. She enjoys Persian cuisine and treasures her Gilaki heritage.

Nazy Kaviani

Nazy Kaviani was born in Tehran, Iran. She left Iran for Berkeley, California in 1978 to attend college, staying on after the Iranian revolution. Nazy earned her undergraduate degree in marketing and continued working as a management professional in the US. Returning to Iran in 1992 and staying for 14 years, these days she makes her home in the San Francisco Bay area, where she is active in literary circles and cultural enrichment programs. She has published several writing and poetry pieces in English in several Iranian publications in California and on Iranian.com, where she is a frequent contributor. Nazy is a blogger and serves on the Advisory Board of the Association of Iranian American Writers.

www.nazykaviani.blogspot.com

Laleh Khadivi

Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan, Iran in 1977. She has lived all over the world and worked extensively as a director of documentary films, taught creative writing at Emory University, University of Wisonsin - Madison, and various prisons and half way houses in the south, northeast and Bay area. She is the recipient of a Carl Djerassi Fiction Fellowship, The Emory Fiction Fellowship and a Whiting Award. The 'Age of Orphans' is her first book.

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.

Sepideh Khosrowjah

Sepideh Khosrowjah left Iran when she was seventeen. She is one of the co-founders of Darvag, an Iranian/American theatre group in Berkeley, established in 1985. Sepideh has worked with Darvag as a playwright, actor, and director. She has written a number of plays including; If You Leave I'll be Lonely, Who Is Going to Give Us Another Chance, Morgheh Sahar and The Beginning of Cold Season. Her play, In Memory of Kazem Ashtari, was last performed in the 19th International Iranian Women's Studies Foundation (IWSF) conference in Berkeley in 2008. In 2007, a collection of her plays was published in Iran by Nila Publications. Sepideh's writings have a definite emphasis on woman's issues. In 2008, as a reflection or reaction to ever increasing memoirs of Iranian women living outside of Iran, she wrote the English language play, It is not about pomegranate. Sepideh has a Bachelor in Mathematics and a Masters in Economics.