R287. Iranian Diaspora Writers as Cultural Ambassadors: Engaging Iran After the Nuclear Agreement

Salon F, Washington Convention Center, Level One
Thursday, February 9, 2017
4:30 pm to 5:45 pm

 

This dynamic panel features writers/translators who engage Iran and Iranian culture through poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and translation. By sharing their work, these Iranian American writers offer a literary window at a time when we need cultural ambassadors to shape a powerful dialogue about US-Iran relations. Panelists read from their work, discuss the challenges and opportunities for publishing, translating, and participating in a cultural shift as diaspora writers in both the US and Iran.


Participants

Moderator:

Persis Karim is a poet, editor, and professor at San Jose State University. Her poetry has appeared in numerous national journals. She is coeditor of Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian American Writers and editor of Let Me Tell You Where I've Been: New Writing by Women of the Iranian Diaspora.

Javier Zamora is a 2016–2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Kenyon ReviewPloughshares, and Poetry.

Anita Amirrezvani’s first novel, The Blood of Flowers, has appeared in thirty-one languages. Her second novel is Equal of the Sun. She coedited the 2013 anthology Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers. Anita teaches at the California College of the Arts.

Jasmin Darznik is the author of The Good Daughter. A New York Times bestseller, the memoir has been translated into eight languages and was shortlisted for the 2013 Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

Soraya Shalforoosh is the author of a collection of poetry, This Version of Earth. Soraya won the Prentiss Cheney Hoyt Poetry award at Clark University. Soraya has led workshops at William Paterson University, and been a guest speaker at San Jose State, Berkeley College, and the American Embassy in Algeria.

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