Iran
Morteza Abdolalian
Journalist, blogger, poet and human rights advocate Morteza Abdolalian spent
much of his academic and professional career abroad following the 1979
Revolution in Iran. He first settled in the Philippines, where he continued
his studies. After returning to Iran in the early 1980s, he was arrested at
the airport and fingered as a leader of the student movement. Abdolalian was
taken to the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, where he was subjected to
intense interrogations. Although released a couple of weeks later, he was
often harassed on the telephone and detained. After being abducted off the
street, his armed attacker released him but promised to return. Abdolalian,
no longer feeling safe, doctored his passport and fled Iran.
After a short stay in Japan, Abdolalian settled in Canada. He writes for several Farsi-language newspapers in Canada. He is a member of the Oakville Writers' Group and a published poet. Most recently, in April 2005, he gave a reading at the Hamilton Poetry Centre as part of PEN Canada's Readers & Writers program. Morteza Abdolalian is currently managing IRAN WATCH CANADA (www.moriab.blogspot.com) which monitors Free Expression and human rights in Iran.
Reza Baraheni
Reza Baraheni was born in Tabriz, Iran. He is the author of 54 books, including the Crowned Cannibals, a collection of prose and poetry, and Les Saisons en Enfer du Jeune Ayyaz, a novel. His God's Shadow: Prison Poems is a collection of poems based on a period of 102 days spent in solitary confinement in Iran, during the time of the Shah. He was also imprisoned in the fall of 1981 and the winter of 1982 by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Active for the last 35 years in trying to promote democratic liberties in his country, Baraheni was a signatory to a 1994 open letter to the world calling for artistic freedom and an end to censorship. He was one of two scholars to join the Scholars-at-Risk Program at U of T's Massey College and is presently a visiting professor at the university's Centre for Comparative Literature. He is a former President of PEN Canada.
Sasan Ghahreman
Sasan Ghahreman fled his country in 1983 as a result of political persecution. Because of his democratic activities, condemning Salman Rushdie’s death sentence, for example, and for the content of some of his published essays, he was unable to return to his country without being at direct risk. Ghahreman studied Literature and Culture and Drama in Iran (University of Tehran), and English Literature and Sociology in Canada (York University). He has been writing since the age of 16 and has published six books, including three novels, three poetry selections and a collection of critical articles and essays, since 1994. All of his published works were originally written and published in Persian; In addition, he has also written a few essays in English and translated a few short stories and poems from English to Persian, which have been published in Persian papers. Ghahreman is presently editor of the story and satire sections of the only Persian literary magazine on the net in exile, Adabiat Va Farhang (www.mani-poesie.de). He is presently working on a new novel (Our Misha's Love), editing the English translation of his second novel (Café Renaissance) and promoting his third poetry collection, Twelve Narratives of Death.
Saghi Ghahraman
Saghi Ghahraman was born in Mash'had, Iran, in 1957. She fled Iran in 1981
after country-wide arrests of Tudeh Party members and its women's
organization branch took place. She lived as a refugee in Turkey before
emigrating to Canada in 1988. She has published four collections of Persian
poetry and short fiction, and has given readings in Europe through Persian
literary organizations of writers-in-exile as well as in English at
Montreal's Blue Metropolis festival. She has been an editorial board member
of Sepidar, a Persian literary magazine in Toronto, and contributed to
various Persian quarterlies and magazines. Saghi is currently chief-editor
of Cheraq on-line, a Toronto-based queer Iranian monthly magazine.
Fereshteh Molavi
Living in Canada since 1998, Fereshteh Molavi is an native Iranian writer
who has worked as a bibliographer, scholar, as well as a freelance editor
and translator. While still living in Iran, she published several articles
and books, among them a novel, The House of Cloud and Wind (1991), and a
collection of short stories, The Sun Fairy (1991). Listen to the Reed , a
chapbook published by PEN Canada in 2005, is based on her dialogue with
Karen Connelly, the award-winning Canadian writer. Molavi has been included
in anthologies, among them, Afsaneh: Short Stories by Iranian Women (
London: Saqi, 2005) and Speaking in Tongues: PEN Canada Writers in Exile
(The Banff Centre Press, 2005). Her stories and essays have been published
in various Persian and English magazines and anthologies. She has had
readings in Sweden, the US and Canada. Her latest collection of short
stories in Persian, The Wandering Nightingale, was released in Tehran in
2006. Fereshteh has a bilingual English/Persian literary website
www.fereshtehmolavi.net.
Iraj Rahmani
Iraj Rahmani was born and educated in Iran, where he completed his Master’s Degree, and taught at the Kerman University, Iran, but he was soon in danger because of his democratic activism. In 1983 he fled his country, crossing the border to Pakistan and spending four months there, and arrived in Montreal later that year. In 1985 he graduated from McGill University in Library & Information Science, and worked as a librarian with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment for many years. At the same time, Rahmani pursued his real passion: creative writing. He has published seven books, including poetry, short fiction and three novels. Living in Toronto, recently he has self-translated his 2001 novel into English, titled The Incident Happens as Written. In addition, he has also written essays and translated a few Canadian short stories and plays from French and English to Persian, which have been published in Persian literary magazines and internet sites.
Nooshin Salari
Nooshin Salari was born in Tabriz, Iran. She immigrated to Canada in 1992. She attended the University of Saskatchewan and obtained her degree in Pharmacy. Salari began writing short stories as a teenager in Tehran, Iran. Her first story, "School Library", appeared in 1980 in Negeen magazine. Since then, her stories have appeared in different literary magazines in Iran including the World of Words. Several of her stories have also appeared in various volumes of the Anthology of Short Stories by Iranian and world writers (selected by Safdar Taghizadeh) as well as a collection of short stories by contemporary Iranian female writers called At the Threshold of a Cold Season (selected by Toraj Rahnama and Susan Gaveri). Salari’s first collection of short stories, The End of the Apple Tree, was published by Movarid Press in Tehran in 2004. She has completed a second collection of short stories and is currently working on her first novel. The two collections of short stories are in translation.
Mehri Yalfani
Born in Hamadan, Iran, Mehri Yalfani began writing short stories in high school. Her first collection of stories, Happy Days, was published in 1966. After finishing high school, she moved to Tehran to study, and graduated from the University of Tehran in electrical engineering. She worked as an engineer for the next twenty years. Her second book, the novel Before the Fall, was published in Iran in 1980. In 1985, Yalfani settled in France and then, in 1987, to Canada with her family. Since then, she has published in many Farsi and English-language journals. Two collections of short stories and three novels in Farsi have been published. Her most recent Farsi novel, Dancing in A Broken Mirror, was published in Iran. Two collections of short stories in English - Parastoo and Two Sisters - have been published in Canada In November 2002, her novel Asfaneh's Moon was published in Canada by McGilligan Books. The book chronicles the lives of four young Iranians entwined in a love story against the barriers of fundamentalist Islam.
