The recording of the event is now made available:
The Persian Language and Iranian Studies Initiative at UBC, the UBC Persian Literature Reading Club, and the UBC Persian Club are hosting a series of events analyzing the literature of migration and exile in Modern Persian Literature in Spring 2022. The third and last session of the Spring 2022 series features guest speakers Bita Malakouti and Rira Abbasi. The panel discussion will deal with all that goes into the process of choosing a theme or a topic for a work of literature, including the audience (writing for readers in the native land or the immigrants and their community), the Life-Worlds they decide to focus on (the writer’s experience, the immigrants’ experience, and even publishers (in Iran or other countries), etc.
The event is sponsored by the Department of Asian Studies.
Date & Time:
Saturday, May 7, 2022
11:00am (PDT) / 10:30pm (Tehran Time)
Location: online via Zoom
Presented in Persian
Free & open to the public.
Guest speakers
Bita Malakouti was born in 1973 in Tehran. She started taking writing seriously at the age of 20 and her poems and short stories were getting published in different magazines before the age of 25. She has written and published extensively as a theater and drama critic for several years.
She has so far published eight books, including three collections of short stories, three poetry, one novella and one reference book on the professional life of the renowned Iranian actress Soosan Taslimi. Some of her works include Christ and whispered of Shahnameh daughter, Empty coffin, My name is Layla, and Sour apple, Salty Rain. She left Iran for the United States in 2006. Now she is living in Prague, Czech Republic. Some of her poems have been translated and published in other languages such as English, French, Turkish, Kurdish, Swedish, Czech, Arabic, Nepali, Italian and Spanish.
Rira Abbasi was born in Khorramabad, Iran. Acclaimed as Iran’s Lady Poet Laureate and the winner of the Parvin Etesami Poetry Award in 2005, Rira is also a member of Iran’s Writers Association and the founder and director of the biennial International Peace Poetry festival since 2007. Rira has edited and introduced the first collection of Iranian Peace Poetry (an anthology) in 2002. In 2008, she founded the R.B.H, an establishment in line with the International Peace Poetry Festival. A brainchild of Rira Abbasi and supported solely by individual donations and sponsorship of non-governmental organizations, the charter of the Peace Poetry Festival states that “Poetry for peace is affiliated to humanity, regardless of race, religion, sex and geography”. The world’s first statue, representing “The Poetry of Peace” was made by a team supervised by Rira’s husband, Ali Khorram.
Many of her reviews and literary criticisms have been published in literary journals. Also, many of her poems have been translated into several languages such as Italian, English, German, Indian, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese, Romanian, Arabic, Turkish and etc. Rira has been invited to many authoritative international poetry festivals so far and has attended in some of them. She has edited and translated “Local Poetry” (Tehran, 2005) which is published at Studies and Research Center and Cultural Anthropology. “Inversion” (Tehran, 2008) and “Tin Frog” (Tehran, 2010) are two recent novels by Rira which are banned to publish by the government. Rira has also collected the anthology of World’s Peace Poetry which is a multilingual selection of poems from the first and the second International Peace Poetry Festival and is ready to print.
In 2011, Rira received a grant from Prince Claus Fund institute to take part in 21 Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín, Colombia. In April 2012 a short film was made based on of her longer poems called “MYSTERIOUS NUCLEUSES” In 2014, Rira’s efforts led to the publication of Iran’s first multilingual anthology of poetry “Peace, the Poetry of Life ” (contemporary poets of the world). Her works include Valentine, the White Sheep (April 2014). In 2015, Rira’s efforts led to the publication of “Inversion” a novel entitled (Naakoja Publications, Paris). A collection of stories “Bear and fever Marquez “was published in 2020. Maryam Ala Amjadi’s translations of Rira Abbasi’s poetry chapbook “I Gave Birth in War” received Honorable Mention and will be published by QuillsEdge Press, US. In 2021, Rira’s efforts led to the publication of “Tandadegi” a novel (Ikhanum Publication, Kabul Afghanistan). Her latest work is a collection of stories entitled “Wake up Mah Dolat”, which was published in 2021(Aftab Publication, Oslo Norway).
Moderators
- Fariba Sedighim
- Bahram Moradi
- Hessam Dehghani