William Saroyan was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film The Human Comedy. When the studio rejected his original 240-page treatment, he turned it into a novel, The Human Comedy.
Forugh Farrokhzad was an influential Iranian poet and film director. She was a controversial modernist poet and an iconoclastic, feminist author. Farrokhzad died in a car accident at the age of 32.
Azadeh Moaveni is an Iranian-American writer, journalist, and academic. She is the former director of the Gender and Conflict Program at the International Crisis Group, and is Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism. She is the author of four books, including the bestselling Lipstick Jihad and Guest House for Young Widows, which was shortlisted for numerous prizes. She contributes to The New York Times, The Guardian, and The London Review of Books.
Jayne Anne Phillips is an American novelist and short story writer who was born in the small town of Buckhannon, West Virginia.
Aimee Phan is an American novelist and educator, of Vietnamese descent. She teaches at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California.
Alan Stuart Cheuse was an American writer, editor, professor of literature, and radio commentator. A longtime NPR book commentator, he was also the author of five novels, five collections of short stories and novellas, a memoir and a collection of travel essays. In addition, Cheuse was a regular contributor to All Things Considered. His short fiction appeared in respected publications like The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Antioch Review, Prairie Schooner, among other places. He taught in the Writing Program at George Mason University and the Community of Writers.
Laura Furman is an American author whose work has appeared in The New Yorker,Mirabella,Ploughshares, Southwest Review, Yale Review, and elsewhere.
Porochista Khakpour is an Iranian American novelist, essayist, and journalist.
Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-born American poet, editor, playwright, and literary translator. She was born in Iran, and lived in Trinidad and England during her teenage years, before settling in the United States. She lives in Los Angeles.
Brad Kessler is an American prize-winning novelist and non-fiction writer whose work has been translated into several languages. He is best known for his novel Birds in Fall which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and his memoir Goat Song about living with goats and the culture of pastoralism.
Edie Meidav is an American novelist.
Laleh Khadivi is an Iranian American novelist, and filmmaker.
Peter Selgin is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, essayist, editor, and illustrator. Selgin is Associate Professor of English at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Georgia.
Farzaneh Milani is an Iranian-born American scholar, author, poet, translator, and educator. Milani teaches Persian literature and women's studies at the University of Virginia; and serves as the Chair of the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures. She is also a poet, award-winning translator, and a recipient of the Carnegie Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Milani's 1992 book Veils and Words: the Emerging Voices of Iranian Women Writers, has seen its sixteenth printing.
Eugenia Kim is a Korean American writer and novelist who lives in Washington, DC. She is most known for her novel, The Calligrapher's Daughter, which was critically acclaimed and won multiple awards, including a 2009 Borders Original Voices Award for Fiction. Kim teaches at Fairfield University's MFA Creative Writing program.
Beth Ann Fennelly is an American poet and prose writer and was the Poet Laureate of Mississippi.
Megan Mayhew Bergman is an American writer and environmental journalist, author of the books Almost Famous Women, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, and How Strange a Season, and a forthcoming biography on the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. In 2015, she won the Garrett Award for Fiction.
Alden Jones is an American writer and educator. She is the author of memoirs The Wanting Was a Wilderness (2020) and The Blind Masseuse (2013) and the short story collection Unaccompanied Minors (2014). The Blind Masseuse was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogal Award for the Art of the Essay.
"The Wind-Up Doll" is a poem by Forough Farrokhzad. It was translated into English in "A Rebirth: Poems" by David Martin, accompanied by a critical essay by Farzaneh Milani.
Rebecca Chace is an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and actor. She is the author of the novel Leaving Rock Harbor (2010), which was recognized as an Editors’ Choice by TheNew York Times, a June Indie Notable Book by the American Booksellers Association, and a finalist for the New England Book Award. Chace's novel Capture the Flag (1999), has been adapted for the screen with director Lisanne Skyler. The film was awarded the Showtime Tony Cox Screenplay Award at the 2010 Nantucket Film Festival. She has also published the memoir Chautauqua Summer (1993), and her first children's novel June Sparrow and the Million Dollar Penny (2017). Her plays include Colette and an adaptation of Kate Chopin's novel The Awakening .
