Maryam Rajavi is a leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), an organization advocating the overthrow of the Iranian government, and president-elect of its National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). She is married to Massoud Rajavi, who is the co-leader of MEK.
Maryam Keshavarz is an American filmmaker(Iranian pedigreed) best known for her 2011 film Circumstance distributed by Participant Media and Roadside Attractions, which won the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival.
Maryam Namazie is a British-Iranian secularist, communist and human rights activist, commentator, and broadcaster. She is the Spokesperson for Fitnah – Movement for Women’s Liberation, One Law for All and the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. She is known for speaking out against Islam and Islamism and defending the right to apostasy and blasphemy.
Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami is a literary critic, writer and Iranologist.
The American Institute of Iranian Studies (AIIrS) is a non-profit consortium of US universities and museums, founded in 1967, for the purpose of promoting Iranian and Persian studies. AIIrS facilitates academic and cultural exchange between the US and Iran and is dedicated to supporting scholars and funding research in Iranian Studies. It represents American institutions of higher education and research in Iranian Studies and furthers the field in the US curriculum.
The Iranian diaspora refers to Iranian people or those who are of Iranian ancestry living outside Iran.
Taraneh Hemami is an Iranian-born American visual artist, curator, and arts educator based in San Francisco. Her works explore the complex cultural politics of exile through personal and collective, multidisciplinary projects often through site specific installation art or participatory engagement projects.
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.
Cynthia Lee Macdonald was an American poet, educator, and psychoanalyst.
Kamshad Kooshan is an Iranian-born American actor, film director, screenwriter, film producer, and educator.
Elizabeth Eslami is an Iranian American writer of novels, essays, and short stories.
Nasrin Rahimieh is an Iranian-born American literary critic, editor, and educator. Rahimieh is the Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Director of the Humanities Core program at the University of California, Irvine (UCI).
Taravat Talepasand is an Iranian-American contemporary artist, activist, and educator. She is known for her interdisciplinary painting practice including drawing, sculpture and installation. As an Iranian-American woman, Talepasand explores the cultural taboos that reflect on gender and political authority. Her approach to representation and figuration reflects the cross-pollination, or lack thereof, in our Western Society. Talepasand previously held the title of the chair of the painting department at San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). She is a Tenure-Track professor in Art Practice at Portland State University, College of Art + Design.
Solmaz Sharif is an Iranian-American poet. Her debut poetry collection, Look, was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English at UC Berkeley.
Roxanne Varzi is an Iranian-born American cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, sound artist, writer, playwright, and educator. She is a full professor of anthropology and film and media studies at University of California, Irvine (UCI). Varzi is known for her various works in media, including books, film documentaries, sound performances, and theatrical plays.
Jasmin Darznik is the New York Times bestselling author of three books, The Bohemians, Song of a Captive Bird, a novel inspired by the life of Forugh Farrokhzad, Iran's notorious woman poet, and The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life, which became a New York Times bestseller. A New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice" and a Los Angeles Times bestseller, Song of a Captive Bird was praised by The New York Times as a "complex and beautiful rendering of [a] vanished country and its scattered people; a reminder of the power and purpose of art; and an ode to female creativity under a patriarchy that repeatedly tries to snuff it out." The Bohemians was selected by Oprah Daily as one of the best historical novels of 2021. Darznik's books have been published in seventeen countries.
The Scent of Joseph's Shirt is a 1995 war and drama film written and directed by Ebrahim Hatamikia, Iranian director, who is described as " one of the most outstanding directors of war genre." The film focuses on the Iran–Iraq War prisoners of war. In an interview, Hatamikia said that the film portrays his perception of the concept of the reappearance of Muhammad al-Mahdi.
