Danial Haghighi

Danial Haghighi (born in 1988) is a Tehran-based author of seven books and numerous essays in Persian. His works have appeared in N+1 and the short story collection, Tehran Noir (2014). He explains to Writing between the Lines: “Young Iranian writers are not allowed to pry into many spaces; there are many red lines that must not be crossed.” A Vegetative State Announcement was the novel that Haghighi wrote when he was 21 years old. Banned in Iran, it is available on the Persian-language, self-publishing platform, Nogaam.com. “If you publish your book online,” Haghighi concludes, “it is better received. People think an unofficial publication is more reliable, as censorship has not stuck its claws in it. The first casualty of censorship is often the reader’s trust.”

Salar Abdoh is an Iranian novelist, essayist and translator, who divides his time between New York and Tehran. He is the author of the novels Poet Game (2000), Opium (2004), Tehran at Twilight (2014), and Out of Mesopotamia (2020) and the editor of the short story collection Tehran Noir (2014). His latest novel, A Nearby Country Called Love, published last year by Viking, was described by the New York Times as “a complex portrait of interpersonal relationships in contemporary Iran.” Salar Abdoh also teaches in the graduate program in Creative Writing at the City College of New York at the City University of New York.