Symposium
& Festival: "The World Republic of Literature"
Lannan Symposium,
April 11-12, 2006
Gonda Theatre, Georgetown University
Shahrnush Parsipur
Shahrnush Parsipur was born in Tehran on February 17, 1946. She began her literary career when she was sixteen, writing short stories and articles. She graduated from the University of Tehran in Sociology.
When she was twenty-eight, she wrote her first novel, Sag va Zememstaneh Boland (The Dog and the Long Winter). In the same year, while serving as the producer of the “Rural Women,” a socially inclined weekly program for the National Iranian TV, she resigned in protest of torture and subsequent execution of two journalist-poet activists by SAVAK. Imprisoned for several months, she moved to France to study Chinese Philosophy and Language. There, she wrote her second novel, Majerahayeh Sadeh va Kuchake Ruheh Derakht (Plain and Small Adventures of the Spirit of the Tree) in 1977.
She is the author of works including Touba va Maanayeh Shab (Touba and the Meaning of Night), Women without Men, among others. Her work has been translated into several languages including English, Swedish, Spanish, and Italian. She is the recipient of the Lillian Hellman/Dashell-Hammet award. She currently lives in the United States of America as a political refugee.