Sunday, April 24th, 6-8pm
Arc Gallery & Studios
1246 Folsom St., San Francisco

Siamak Vossoughi (Better Than War), Persis Karim (Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers), Jasmin Darznik (The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Life), and Shideh Etaat (recipient of the 2015 James D. Phelan Award) will be discussing the new narratives being shaped today in Iranian-American literature.

bios:

Siamak Vossoughi was born in Tehran, grew up in Seattle, and lives in San Francisco. His work has been published in Kenyon Review Online, Missouri Review, The Rumpus, and Glimmer Train. His short story collection, “Better Than War”, received a 2014 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

Persis Karim is a writer, editor, and professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Jose State University. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Reed Magazine, HeartLodge, Caesura, Callaloo, and other. She is the editor of three anthologies of Iranian-American literature and her most recent anthology “Tremors: New Fiction by Iranian-American Writers (with Anita Amirrezvani)”. To find out more information about her work, go to: www.persiskarim.com.

Jasmin Darznik is the author of a New York Times bestseller, “The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life”. Jasmin’s book was published in thirteen countries and shortlisted for the 2012 Saroyan International Prize for Writing. She has contributed to the New York TImes, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among others. She received her Ph.D. in English Literature at Princeton University and now teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of San Francisco.

Shideh Etaat is a writer and teacher at Mission High School in San Francisco. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She is a 2015 James D. Phelan Award recipient and her short story “Take Us to Our Love” was published in The Delmarva Review’s Volume 6. An excerpt from her novel can be found in “Tremors, New Fiction by Iranian Americans”. Her first novel is about a love triangle, Jews in Iran, and other strange and wonderful things. For more information about Shideh’s work, please go to: http://www.thebolditalic.com/users/shidehe.