Rouhi Shafii Editor

Azita Ghahreman

Azita is a writer and poet, born in Mashhad, Iran. She has published six collections of poetry in Farsi, and three collections and two stories in Swedish. Her first poetry book, Eve's Songs, was published in 1990. Her poems have been translated into many languages, including German, French, Turkish, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Spanish and Italian. A collection of her poetry, Negative of a Group Photograph (Bloodaxe Books 2018), won an English Pen award, and a selection of her poems in Russian and Ukrainian was awarded the "Little Ludwig Noble Prize" in 2014 by the Udmurtia Russian Academy. Azita's work has been reviewed in the literary world. On several occasions, she has been a judge for the young poets' contest at the Jaleh Esfahani Cultural Foundation. Her last collection of stories, Somewhere to Get Lost, was published in Sweden in 2022.

Azita's poem in this book is translated from Farsi by Rouhi Shafii.

Ava Homa

Ava Homa is an acclaimed author, speaker, and faculty member at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her debut novel, Daughters of Smoke and Fire (HarperCollins & Abrams, 2020), was named one of the best books of the year by the Wall Street Journal (US), the Independent (UK), and Globe and Mail (Canada). It was featured in Roxane Gay's Book Club, won the 2020 Nautilus Silver Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2022 William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her short story collection, Echoes from the Other Land, was nominated for the 2011 Frank O'Connor Short Story Prize. Ava holds a master's degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor, and her essays and fiction have been published and anthologized in the UK, US, and Canada. She has delivered speeches across Europe and North America, including at the United Nations in Geneva.

Ziba Karbassi

Ziba Karbasi was born in Tabriz, north-western Iran, and has lived in the UK since her teenage years. Her first book in Farsi was published in her early twenties. Since then, she has published twelve poetry collections in both Farsi and other languages. These include her trilingual book, Ooooooommm (Mille Gru, 2011) and Collage Poems (Exiled Writers Ink, 2009). Her work has been translated into more than fifteen languages. She is widely regarded as one of the leading poets of her generation living in exile. She is known for her dense, revolutionary and lyric poetry, and has performed her poems widely across Europe and America. In 1997, she introduced a subject to poetry known as Breath Poetry. In 2009, she won the Golden Apple Poetry Price in Azerbaijan. In 2012, she was chosen by the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre (CPRC), Birkbeck, University of London, as a writer whose language epitomises the revolutionary power of poetry when faced by the crises of our lives in the contemporary world. Ziba was chairperson of the Iranian Writers Association (in exile) from 2002 to 2004, and chair of Exiled Writers Ink in the UK from 2012 to 2014. She has served as a director of PEN international relations (Iran in exile) from 2019 to the beginning of 2021.

Ziba's peoms in this book are translated from Farsi by Nazlee Radboy.

Soheila Mirzaei

Soheila Mirzaei was boran in Urmia in north-east Iran. She spent her childhood in Azerbaijan before migrating with her family to Tehran. She has been passionate about literature and writing poetry since her teenage years. In the 1970s, she participated in poetry and storytelling workshops led by the acclaimed Iranian novelist, poet and critic, Reza Baraheni. Soheila's first book was published during this period, coinciding with her migration to Germany. Her books include I slip From My Hands, (Aida Publications, Germany, 2013); Diaspora of Poetry, an anthology of poetry by modern Iranian women (Aftab Publications, Norway, 2021); Elmiden Doshurum, a bilingual poetry collection in Farsi and Azeri; Michka Sings Illegally (Mortazavi Publications, Germany, 2005); and I Remain with a Sin (Hamgam Publications, Tehran, Iran, 1998).

Soheila's peoms in this book are translated from Farsi by Rouhi Shafii.

Sana Nassari

Born in 1985, Sana Nassari is a young award-winning Iranian writer, poet, and literary translator, based in London. To date she has published one novel of her own, and translated four novels by the American multi-award-wining writer Karen Joy Fowler, and a novel by the late Polish writer Marek Hlasko, into Farsi. A chapbook of Sana's short stories, These Two Roses, has been published by Exiled Writers Ink (London, 2020). Her debut poetry collection, Departure, has been published by the reputable publishing house Morvarid in Iran. Also, her poetry collection, Oh Delilah, was due to be published by Morvarid, but was banned by the country's censor authorities. This collection won the second prize for unpublished collections from the Journalists' Poetry Award. Sana has recently obtained an MA in History of Art at SOAS, University of London. Currently, she writes reviews and essays for the Writers Mosaic magazine.

Nasrin Parvaz

Nasrin Parvaz became a civil rights activist when the Islamic regime took power in 1979. She was arrested in 1982, tortured and spent eight years in prison. Her books include One Woman's Struggles in Iran: a prison memoir (award-winner in the Women's Issues category of 2019 International Book Awards), and The Secret Letters from X to A (Victorina Press, 2018). Her prison memoir has also been published in Spanish and German. Her new novel, Coffee, was longlisted for Bath Novel Award 2023. Some of Nasrin's short stories and poems have been published in various anthologies. She has also translated poems into English and published a novel in Farsi about the massacre of prisoners in 1988 in Iran, to which she was an eyewitness. Nasrin has written articles in national newspapers. She is a regular participant in discussion panels and has been frequently interviewed about the situation in Iran on national radio and TV. Her paintings have been in various exhibitions, and on postcards and calendars. Nasrin studied for a degree in psychology and subsequently gained an MA in International Relations. She then completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Systemic Theory at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, where she worked in a team of family therapists for some time.

Mehrangiz Rassapour (M. Pegah)

Mehrangiz Rassapour (M. Pegah) is a poet, literary critic, translator and editor of Vajeh (Word), a Persian cultural and literary magazine. Born in Khoram-Abad, in south-east Iran, she started writing poetry when she was nine and had her first ghazal published in a prestigious literary magazine when she was thirteen. Her first book of poetry, Spark Dies At Once (Jaragheh Zood Mimirad) was published in Iran in 1992, followed by her second collection And Then the Sun (Va Sepass Aftaab) in the UK, then Birds are Out of Date (Parandeh Digar, Na), published in Germany. Her fourth book, The Planet of Pause (Sayaareh Ye Derang) was published in April 2012. Her critically acclaimed work has been translated into English, French, German, Polish, Italian and other languages. Mehrangiz's first pamphlet in English, The Planet of Immortals, was published by Exiled Writers Ink in 2021. At an international poetry festival in France, she was given the title 'The Dawn of Literature' in the culture section of Le Temps.

Some of Mehrangiz's poems in this book are translated from Farsi by the poet herself and edited by Catherine Davidson. Some are translated by Robert Chandler.

Shirin Razavian

Shirin Razavian is a Tehran-born British poet whose work has appeared in Poetry London, Index on Censorship, The London Magazine, Agenda and Persian Book Review, among others. She has published six Farsi and English poetry collections in the UK, the latest of which is Birds of Darkness. Shirin is a member of the poetry magazine World Cultural Heritage Voices, and on the editorial committee of Exiled Ink Magazine. She was also a judge for the Jaleh Esfahani Cultural Foundation Poetry Prize. Some of her poems have been translated into Czech, in the anthology Before Infinity Ends. In 2015, Shirin was selected to represent Iran in the Happiness-the Delight Tree, an anthology publishedby the UN Society of Writers. Her work has also been featured in several other anthologies, including The Poetry of Iranian Women (US); The Silver Throat of the Moon (UK); Resistance, Voices of Exiled Writers;Avay e Tabeed; and Diasporic Poetry. Shirin has been a committee member of Iranian PEN in Exile, and Iranian Writers Association in Exile for four years. In 2023, she was chosen by Art on The Underground to collaborate with London artist Barby Asante in a project called Declaration of Independence, and received two Make a Difference awards for promoting diversity and inclusion.

Muzhgan Saghar Schaffa

Muzhgan Saghar Schaffa was born in 1977 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Her father was in the army, and her mother was from the first generation of women's rights activists. She finished high school in Kabul, then following the Taliban's first round of invasion of Afghanistan, she emigrated to Germany. After learning German, she studied pedagogy, and now works with children. Her first collection of poetry, Colourless Apples, was published in Kabul in 2014, followed by two other collections, The Sun Rains and Unsettled Ocean, published in Herat in 2020.

Muzhgan's poems in this book are part of her collection of poetry, translated from Farsi into English by Rouhi Shafii.

Rouhi Shafii

Rouhi Shafii is a sociologist, writer, translator of Persian poetry, and women's rights activist. She has published six books, both in Farsi and English. Among her acclaimed translations into Farsi are Women of Vietnam and Argentina, National Resistance and Peron's Dictatorship. Her memoir, Scent of Saffron (1997) was widely welcomed as one of the first memoirs in English by an Iranian woman after the revolution. Her historical novel, Pomegranate Hearts (2006) was a kaleidoscope of fiction within the history of contemporary Iran. She has published reviews on the memoirs of a number of political prisoners in both Farsi and English. She has translated two books of Persian poetry into English, Migrating Birds and The Anthems of Love, both published by the Jaleh Esfahani Cultural Foundation. Her latest book, Gates to the Great Civilization in Farsi was published in 2023. Rouhi is a member of the Executive Committee of Exiled Writers Ink, and the editorial board of Exiled Ink Magazine. Her first collection of poetry in English will soon be published.