Association of Iranian American Writers (AIAW)

"The Association of Iranian American Writers is a member-based organization dedicated to promoting the work of fiction and non-fiction writers, essayists, poets, journalists, photojournalists, and artists who work with words. Iranian heritage and/or Iranian history and culture are important aspects of our work, although not necessarily our essential subject matter."

There's been a lot of books from and about Iran in recent years and I hope you've all read Persepolis, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Septembers of Shiraz, and Funny in Farsi. I mean, c'mon, they are huge books (not literally) and you couldn't have missed them at the bookstore. Up until a few years ago, I had no exposure to Iranian American literature, which is totally sad because there's a ton of great Iranian American writers and stories that need to be told. AIAW's well organized and informative site is a great place to get started, especially their Featured Writers Overview page.

I have to admit, I didn't know much about the history of Iran back then either, pre- or post-revolution, and I had to take some time to educate myself because if you're going to journey into works set in unfamiliar historical places, you gotta study up. That's half the fun of reading, am I right?

Also, this past weekend I went to Zohreh Ghahremani's book launch -- which was how I found out about AIAW. I had the honor of getting an advance copy of Sky of Red Poppies awhile ago and Zoe was kind enough to let me blurb it! Let me tell you, it is not easy to sum up a beautiful book in a few short sentences. Or in my case, a sentence. If it were up to me, I would have slapped a lot of superlatives and exclamation marks for my portion because that's how I felt about Zoe's book. I think you'll agree after reading it.

• AIAW Website | Blog | Facebook
• Author Nahid Rachlin remembers her childhood writing room in Iran
• Iranian Women and Contemporary Memoirs (2004)
• Sorry, Wrong Chador: In Tehran, 'Reading Lolita' Translates as Ancient History (2004)
• Iranian American writers try to resolve their conflicting cultures in two books (2000)